Mr. Kill

by Martin Limon

  “What did he look like?” Mr. Kill asked.

  “Like them,” she said, pointing to Ernie and me. She realized Mr. Kill expected more, so she said, “Big. With a big nose.”

  Patiently, Mr. Kill took her through all the various physical attributes a person can have. When he was finished, we had the picture we expected. A Caucasian male, about six feet tall—maybe a little more, maybe a little less—with short-cropped dark hair, but she hadn’t noticed if the hair was curly or straight. His nose was big, not as pointed as Ernie’s and not as puffed up as mine. He wore a dark shirt of some sort, she wasn’t sure of the color, and he wore dark slacks, although they could’ve been blue jeans. His shoes, she didn’t see.

  “How about a traveling bag?” Kill asked.

  She shook her head. “He wasn’t carrying one. And I would’ve noticed. I’m in that line of work.”

  Mr. Kill asked about the man’s hands. He’d used them to point at the handbag and he’d used them to make payment.

  Yes, there was hair on the hands. She crinkled her nose at the memory. And the nails, she thought, were probably cut short, although she couldn’t be sure. No rings or jewelry that she remembered.

  Mr. Kill asked if he’d spoken to her in Korean or English.

  “He didn’t say anything,” the vendor replied. “He just pointed.” Her array of handbags was hanging by nails on the rafters.

  “He didn’t ask how much it was?”

  “No. So I told him. Four thousand five hundred.”

  “You told him in Korean or English?”

  “In English,” she replied proudly. “I can speak that much.”

  “Isn’t four thousand five hundred a little steep?” Kill asked.

  The woman blushed. “All foreigners are rich,” she said. “And anyway, he didn’t wait for his change.”

  * * *

  A couple of hours later, the local KNPs located the cab drivers. The one who’d driven Mrs. Hyon and her three children to the Shindae Hotel was an elderly man who sat forward on his hard wooden chair and puffed on a Kobuksong cigarette through the entire conversation. According to him, Mrs. Hyon was having trouble with her kids, who were restless after the long train ride. When they arrived at the hotel, she paid him and thanked him, seemed all in all a very nice lady.

  “Chuggosso?” he asked, his mouth open. She’s dead?

  Kill nodded gravely.

  He shook his head sadly. “Aiyu. Kullioyo.” How pitiful.

  The second driver was a younger man, with hair hanging down just slightly over his ears. He seemed nervous. “The foreigner just pointed,” he said in Korean. “He didn’t even wait in line. He just stepped right in front of the other customers and climbed in my cab and he pointed to the cab that had just pulled away from the curb.”

  “Didn’t you tell him to get out of your cab and wait his turn?”

  “No. He looked fierce. With those big eyes and that big nose and those big hairy knuckles. I just drove.”

  “When you arrived at the hotel, what happened?”

  “He pointed at the side of the road. He didn’t want me to follow the other cab into the driveway in front of the hotel. He wanted me to stop before that.”

  “But you’re not supposed to stop there.”

  “No, I’m not. And when I did, traffic was backed up and honking behind me.” The man’s head had been hanging down; he raised it briefly. “I’m not going to get a ticket, am I?”

  “No. No ticket,” Kill said. “What happened then?”

  “He thrust some money at me.”

  “How much?”

  “At first I wasn’t sure. It was wadded up. I didn’t even count it right away. All I did was smile and nod my head and pray that he’d climb out of my cab. He did. Then I pulled away. Later, I counted the money. About eight hundred won, all in hundred-won notes.”

  “How much was the actual fare?”

  “Less than four hundred.”

  “Easy money.”

  “I wouldn’t say so.”

  “Why not?” Kill asked.

  “Because he scared the piss out of me.”

  Kill said he was going to try for another composite sketch, using the train-station vendor and the young cab driver. Meanwhile, he had the Korean National Police put out an all-points bulletin for Specialist Four Nicholas Q. Weyworth. I told him that we suspected him of trafficking in contraband, an allegation that would be enough for the KNPs to hold him at least until the 8th Army MPs arrived.

  Jurisdiction concerning the United States forces in Korea is always a delicate diplomatic dance. Under the Status of Forces Agreement, the KNPs have the right to arrest an American soldier, but immediately upon doing so they must notify the 8th United States Army. A representative is sent out to make sure that all the G.I.’s rights are respected. Despite these elaborate rules, there are always jurisdictional disputes. Sometimes one side wants to take jurisdiction, sometimes the other. Right now, we just wanted to find Weyworth, take him into custody, and question him. Then we’d go from there.

  Weyworth might not be the Blue Train rapist. His description didn’t match what either the train-station vendor or the cab driver had just told us, but again, eyewitness accounts are notoriously unreliable. I’d already checked, and his blood type wasn’t A-positive, but his personnel records could be wrong. It happens. Or the KNP lab could’ve made a mistake in analyzing the sample. That happens too. Until I was sure, I had to assume that Nicholas Q. Weyworth was a very dangerous man.

  In the meantime, while the KNPs searched for Weyworth, Ernie and I would continue our investigation. Corporal Robert R. Pruchert, the guy who fancied himself some sort of Buddhist monk, was next on our list. His blood type was A-positive. Very possibly just a coincidence. We promised Mr. Kill that we’d find Pruchert today and meet back at the Pusan Police Station this evening to compare notes.

  When we walked into the Hialeah Compound MP station, the desk sergeant was grinning at us and the MP shift change, a whole squad of them, started hooting.

  “Ernie,” one of them said in a high-pitched voice, “we miss you.”

  The others guffawed, and Ernie and I strode up to the desk sergeant and asked him what the hell was going on. He slid a piece of paper across the counter. “This just came in. Your services are required.”

  The same MP pretended he was hugging himself and said once again, in the same sing-song voice, “Oh, Ernie!”

  Ernie flipped him the bird. “What is it?” he asked. I read the message quickly and handed it to him. After staring at it for a few seconds, he crumpled it in his fist.

  “Damn, Marnie,” he said.

  One of the MPs said, “Oh, Marnie!”

  Ernie ran over and pushed him hard. The MP rebounded and raised his fists and Ernie socked him in the jaw. Other MPs surged forward, but I held as many back as I could and after a lot of yelling and shoving, the desk sergeant waded into the melee and started ordering people to back off. Gradually, cooler heads prevailed and the desk sergeant told everyone to get back to work. No one was hurt. Just a little wounded pride. The MPs filed out of the foyer, mumbling and cursing all G.I.s from Seoul.

  I turned to Ernie. “Do you always have to start something?”

  He straightened his jacket and examined his knuckles. A couple of them were bruised. “That’s what I’m here for,” he said.

  8

  Corporal Robert R. Pruchert worked at a commo site in a village known as Horang-ni, about twelve miles north of Pusan. In ancient times, Siberian tigers prowled these mountains. The wildlife was gone now, but what remained was a farming village that had wood huts with strawthatched roofs, and oxen in the field, looking like something out of the Brothers Grimm. Atop a rocky hill sat a First Signal Brigade microwave relay site. A few cement-block buildings were surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with concertina wire; but the main feature, right in the center of the site, was a huge white geodesic dome, looking for all the world like a two-story-tall golf ball.
/>   “What the hell is that?” Ernie asked.

  “Science,” I replied. “That class you skipped in high school.”

  “Why the soccer ball?”

  I shrugged. I really didn’t know, but I told Ernie it was to protect the equipment inside. He bought it. We were driving a puke-green army-issue four-door sedan that we’d checked out of the Hialeah Compound Consolidated Motor Pool. The engine needed work. It stuttered and puttered along but, so far, it had gotten the job done, carrying us out of the city and into this idyllic countryside on a cold, gray, overcast afternoon. We pulled up to the main gate of the signal compound. A listless Korean contract guard in a khaki uniform checked our dispatch. He called ahead. Two minutes later, a buzzer sounded, the gate opened, and we drove through. Ernie parked on a gravel lot near the largest building. We climbed out of the sedan and, before we could reach the front door, an officer burst out, asking us what we wanted. His fatigues were sloppy, as if they hadn’t been pressed in a week. His name tag said Wilson, and his rank was major. I told him what we wanted.

  “Pruchert’s not here,” he said. “He’s on leave.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “Hell if I know.”

  I nodded toward the inside of the signal site. “Maybe some of your men know.”

  “No. None of them know either.” When I continued to stare at him, he started to get nervous, and suddenly he spoke. “Pruchert is an odd bird. He does his own thing. Into all this Buddhism stuff. Where he goes, nobody here has any idea.”

  “Then we’ll want to look at his personal effects. His wall locker, things like that.”

  Major Wilson sighed as if it were the biggest imposition he’d ever faced. “All right. Come on.”

  As we walked through the orderly room and started down a long hallway, Ernie leaned toward me and whispered, “Talk about a plug in his butt.”

  This morning, before we left Hialeah Compound, I’d called Staff Sergeant Riley at the 8th Army CID admin office and asked him to have the Provost Marshal call ahead to the Horang-ni Signal Site to make it easier for us to get access. These signal types were fanatics for security. Not that I blamed them, but the way they kept everything—and everybody—under lock and key made me glad I didn’t work for them.

  Corporal Robert R. Pruchert’s bunk was neatly made, and both his footlocker and his wall locker were secured. There were no personal photos tacked to the wall, only a poster of Siddhãrtha Gautama, the Buddha, perched on a flaming lotus leaf, the thumb and forefinger of his raised hand forming a circle in the air.

  “What’s with the circle?” Ernie asked. “Does that mean the spaghetti’s done?”

  Major Wilson hovered near us, looking worried.

  I studied the poster too. The Buddhist idea that human beings could perfect themselves and attain nirvana was stunning, especially for those of us under the influence of a religion that asked only for grace. It was odd for an American G.I. to take up Buddhism and to spend his precious leave time—time away from this signal site—on such a demanding religious pursuit. But the United States Army is composed of many odd ducks. Chinese characters were sketched below the Buddha. In my notebook, I copied them down.

  Major Wilson was watching my every move. “What’re you copying that for?” he asked.

  “Buddhism’s a profound religion,” I said. “Maybe I’ll take it up some day.”

  He snorted in disbelief.

  Ernie fidgeted, probably about to say something, either about Major Wilson’s lousy attitude or about finding somebody with a crowbar or a bolt cutter so we could bust into Pruchert’s wall locker. I waved him off.

  “That’ll do it, sir,” I said, snapping shut my notebook. “That’s all we need.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  I smiled, and Ernie and I walked down the long corridor. Surly G.I.s slaved over blinking equipment, occasionally glancing at us over their shoulders. Jealous, I thought, that we were able to walk out of there.

  Outside, Ernie said, “Don’t you want to search that wall locker?”

  “No. I have all I need.”

  We climbed back in the sedan, Ernie behind the steering wheel. He stared sourly at the automatic transmission.

  “It’s just not natural,” he said.

  “What?”

  “This,” he said, pointing at the steering wheel. “No stick shift. It just doesn’t seem right, not like real driving. All I’m doing here is pointing and aiming.”

  “That’s all you do with your .45,” I said.

  “But that’s different.”

  “How?”

  “After I point and aim and then pull the trigger,” he said, “people start paying attention to me. With this piece of shit, they just laugh.”

  We backed out of the parking space, turned around, and waited until the khaki-clad guard pulled open the gate. Then we drove out into freedom.

  “Where’s this place again?” Ernie asked.

  I had an army-issue map open on my lap. It had been printed almost twenty years ago, so some of the roads had changed: some had been paved, others had disappeared.

  “Hang a left up ahead.”

  “Past that oxcart?”

  “Yeah.”

  We were way out in the boonies. The Chinese characters I’d copied off Pruchert’s poster were the name of a Buddhist temple. Even without being able to read all of the characters, I could understand that much because I knew the character for the word “temple.” The rest was just a matter of looking them up in the dictionary. Unfortunately, out here in the countryside in the middle of Kyongsan Province, some twenty klicks north of Pusan, I didn’t have a Chinese–English dictionary with me.

  “So, how you going to read it?” Ernie asked.

  “I’ll get help.”

  At the first village we came to, I had Ernie pull over in front of a shack with a sign tacked to the door. The sign was a sheet of red paper with a single Chinese character printed on it, pronounced in Korean as chom. The word meant “divination.” It was the home of a fortune-teller.

  “Fortune-teller?” Ernie asked. “I thought you didn’t believe in that stuff.”

  “I don’t. But the fortune-tellers can usually read Chinese characters, because they have to look up astrological signs in the Book of Changes.”

  “And that has what to do with us finding Pruchert?”

  “They’ll be able to tell me the name of the temple that poster came from. And probably where it’s located.”

  Ernie shook his head. “I’ll wait here.”

  I didn’t tell him how relieved I was to hear that.

  I knocked on the flimsy wooden door and a few seconds later sandals shuffled across dirt. The door opened. A toothless old woman peered out. I spoke to her in Korean.

  “Please help me, Grandmother,” I said. “I have some Chinese characters that I can’t read. Maybe you could read them for me and help me find a Buddhist temple.”

  The wrinkles and dark splotches on her face folded into a huge smile. She motioned to me to enter and had me follow her across a courtyard, and sat me down on a warm ondol floor. The room smelled of pungent, nameless aromas. We talked a while, and I showed her the characters and she read them immediately. Then she started pointing and giving me directions, and I tried to get her to show me on the map, but she wasn’t used to that. A young woman came in with two cups of cold barley tea.

  “My granddaughter,” the old woman said. I nodded to the young girl, and she backed out of the room.

  I listened carefully to the old woman describing directions, trying on my own to follow her on the map. But what really clinched it was when she told me that the temple was on the side of Chonhuang Mountain. Chonhuang meant A Thousand Emperors, and even I could read those characters. I found Chonhuang Mountain on the map and saw nearby the reversed swastika that indicated a Buddhist temple. With my pencil, I circled the swastika.

  I drank the tea, thanked the woman profusely, and offered
her 5,000 won. She said that was too much and tried to turn it down, but I convinced her that she’d done me a great service. Her granddaughter smiled as I walked across the courtyard, bowing deeply. Just as I was about to duck through the small door, the old woman scurried forward, stepping halfway out after me, and grabbed my arm. She made me stand like that, completely still, while she clutched my forearm with both her gnarled hands. She lowered her head. Suddenly everything was quiet around us, as if the entire countryside had gone still. I could barely hear my own breathing, and I couldn’t hear hers at all. Her grip tightened, the fingers digging deeply into flesh, cutting off circulation. The old woman’s body shuddered. Then, after what seemed a long time to stand in the middle of a door, her moist eyes looked up at me.

  “Chosim haseiyo,” she said. Please be careful.

  “I’m always careful, Grandmother,” I said.

  “But you must be especially careful now. There is something waiting for you. Something awful and something very sick.”

  “What’s waiting for me? A man?”

  “Like a man,” she said, “but different. Different here.” She tapped her chest. “You must not let him drown you.”

  “Drown me?”

  Then she let go of my forearm and stepped back. I felt blood rush back toward my fingers.

  “Who is he?” I asked.

  The old woman shook her head, no longer making eye contact. Finally she took a step back, pulling the wooden handle after her. Ancient hinges screeched like a thousand children screaming.

  The door slammed shut.

  Early that morning, at the Hialeah Compound Consolidated Motor Pool, Ernie and I had been forced to cool our heels while we waited to be issued transportation. I took advantage of the delay to fill Ernie in on what I’d learned from Riley about the previous night’s message from 8th Army.

  Marnie had complained to Mr. Broughton, the USO head of entertainment, that she and the other musicians were being stalked again. Things were disappearing, according to her, most recently two sets of underwear that the keyboard player had left in the dressing room at Osan Air Force Base.

  “Probably one of the zoomies,” Ernie said, “jealous of her wardrobe.”