by Martin Limon
“You were in Pusan last night,” he said. Not a question, a statement of fact. We didn’t bother to ask how he knew—the KNPs had forces stationed in every town, village, and hamlet in the country, not to mention their liaison office at 8th Army headquarters. Because the Park Chung-hee regime wanted to maintain a tight hold on power, the Korean National Police was the only official body of law enforcement; local police forces weren’t allowed. So the KNPs were charged with both preventing local crime and protecting the nation from North Korean incursions.
“GIs disappearing,” he continued. “No trace. This is bad.”
“Really bad,” I repeated.
“And now one has turned up dead.” He studied us for a reaction, not getting one. “But you didn’t ask for our help.”
“It’s not up to us,” I said. “We were ordered to go to Pusan, so we went.”
“Yes,” he said. “Good soldiers.”
Ernie fidgeted in his seat.
“I’ll get to the point,” Mr. Kill said. “We’ve been looking into these disappearances, too. But our investigators weren’t able to get much information from the women who work in the GI bars. In previous interviews, none of the women at the Heitei Lounge told my men about Soon-hui on Texas Street. But they told you.”
Both Ernie and I hid our surprise. Apparently, without realizing it, we had been shadowed by the KNPs in Pusan.
“The women at the Heitei Lounge,” Ernie said, “aren’t scared of us.”
“No. It’s ironic; they trust Americans, but not their own countrymen.”
Mr. Kill was one of the few Koreans I knew whose English proficiency was high enough that he could use a word like “ironic” so accurately. He’d not only graduated from a top Korean university, but years ago he’d been selected to attend an Ivy League school in the States. At the time, the US government was focused on building a cadre of loyal, anticommunist law enforcement officers throughout our allied nations. Mr. Kill had been one of the chosen. How anticommunist he was and how loyal to the Park Chung-hee regime, I’d never been able to ascertain. He kept his personal opinions hidden very well.
“Where’s your next stop?” he asked.
I hesitated, then said, “Camp Kyle. Where the first GI went missing.”
“Outside Uijongbu?”
I nodded.
“You know you can ask for our assistance anytime.”
I nodded again.
He leaned back in his seat. “We’re worried about this one,” he said.
“Why?” Ernie asked. “Three GIs go AWOL. One of them ran into some trouble. Maybe it was an accident. Maybe he was drunk. Maybe he slipped and fell into the Yellow Sea. What’s the big deal?”
Ernie neglected to mention the stab wound—hoping, I figured, to keep at least one secret from the KNPs.
“We don’t think they went AWOL,” Mr. Kill replied. “We’re worried about them, just as your commander is. This could cause huge trouble with the American government.”
The authoritarian Park Chung-hee government receives millions of dollars in economic and military aid from the US every year. And our land, sea, and air forces are committed by written agreement to the defense of South Korea. Many observers believe that this close relationship with the Americans is the only thing preventing North Korea from attacking again in their never-ending pursuit to reunify Korea under the red flag of Communism. If word got out about the missing GIs, the negative publicity back in the States could threaten the arrangement between the US and the ROK—the system that paid Mr. Kill’s salary.
“So if you don’t think they went AWOL,” Ernie said, “what do you suppose happened to them?”
Mr. Kill shrugged. “We’re not sure. Usually, when someone disappears so abruptly, it’s because they ran into serious trouble, and we find their bodies in short order. This was the case with Werkowski, but he was found in an odd place: on the shore of the Yellow Sea, far from his home compound. It appears he was stabbed by someone, or possibly impaled by some sort of machinery.” So much for keeping secrets from Mr. Kill. “But the other two are still missing. And these were strong, fully grown men, trained to protect themselves. It is very strange.”
If it was strange to Mr. Kill, who had over two decades of experience as a homicide investigator, it was sure as hell strange to me. I thought about telling him what Auntie Suh had said—her description of the old-fashioned woman in the fog who’d accompanied Specialist Shirkey—but I figured he’d find out on his own, if he hadn’t already.
Mr. Kill slapped his knees, stood suddenly, and said, “Okay, let’s go.”
“Go where?”
“I have something to show you.”
He marched toward the door, and when he opened it, Officer Oh was standing just a few feet away outside. She snapped to attention.
“Kaja!” he said. Let’s go.
Officer Oh led the way, clearly having been briefed on where we were going. The four of us entered the elevator and rode quietly downward until we passed the lobby and descended into basement level three. The door hissed open, and we stepped into a hallway illuminated dimly by yellow lights overhead. The air was different down here, with the tart smell of chemicals and something else hovering around us like a clammy hand.
Ernie sniffed. “The meat locker,” he said.
A double door at the end of the hallway was stenciled with the word bopuihak. Forensics.
Officer Oh held the door open as we entered. A technician was standing by: a white-coated man with plastic gloves next to a gurney. A long white sheet covered what appeared to be a body. The man stood back and bowed as Inspector Kill approached.
“We wanted you to take a look before we sent this one to the morgue,” Mr. Kill said, grabbing the edge of the sheet. He whipped it back.
Laying naked on the cold metal was the body of a young woman, strands of seaweed laced through her tangled black hair. I studied her from head to toe, then focused on the face. It was puffed and distorted, teeth showing beneath puckered lips as if grimacing in agony. Ernie said it first.
“Soon-hui.”
I turned to Kill. “What happened to her?”
“Drowning. Our boys went back to talk to her late last night, after following you back to Hialeah Compound, but she’d already disappeared. They interviewed the other women at the Sea Dragon Nightclub, pieced things together, and found her floating off a pier about a half mile away.”
“How’d she get up here so fast?” Ernie asked.
“This case,” Mr. Kill replied, “is top priority to us. We flew her here by chopper.”
“Do we know who did this?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Not yet. Not sure. But our best investigators in Pusan are working on it.”
“We need to go down there,” I said. “Find her killer.”
“No!” Mr. Kill shouted, giving us an order for the first time since we’d known him. “You continue with what you’re doing. Our men in Pusan will handle this.”
“But we’re the ones who talked to her. This is our fault.”
“You have no way of knowing that. Besides, we don’t have jurisdiction on American compounds. Only you do. You have to keep working that side of the case. It’s likely we don’t have much time.”
He was right. We had two other GIs out there in the wind, and for all we knew, they were still alive. It was up to us to look into activity in the US compounds. Still, I wasn’t happy about being left out of the investigation in Pusan. I wanted to atone somehow for the death of this innocent woman.
Ernie said, “So it wasn’t just the KNPs following us that night in Pusan.”
“Our men saw no one else following you,” Mr. Kill replied. “Whoever targeted Soon-hui tailed her after you left.”
I remembered the shoeshine boy whom I’d startled, and who ran off so quickly. Maybe he’d gone to alert
someone. And then I thought of something else.
“How did you know that Ernie and I were on our way to Pusan?”
“We have our contacts,” Mr. Kill replied.
And plenty of them. Korean civilians worked in clerical jobs at 8th Army headquarters, as air traffic controllers at the 105th Aviation helipad, and even as translators at the Hialeah Compound MP Station. Any—or all—of them could be on the KNP payroll.
“As we speak,” Mr. Kill said, interrupting my thoughts, “my men in Pusan are asking questions out at the Sea Dragon Nightclub.”
“Do you expect the bar girls to cooperate?” Ernie asked.
“Yes,” Mr. Kill replied. “This time, they will.” He lightly tapped a knotted fist into his open palm.
I studied Soon-hui’s face again, thinking of the child she’d lost; of her trips to the Buddhist temple; of Shirkey, the GI who’d betrayed her; and her cruel death—trapped, maybe held, underwater as she struggled to breathe. I forced myself to shove the thoughts from my mind. As I did so, the muscles around her mouth and eyes seemed to relax. Eventually her grimace disappeared.
The change in expression from a frantic murder victim to a woman at peace, I realized, was all in my imagination.
Ernie grabbed my arm and pulled me away from the corpse.
We wound our way out of the busy downtown Seoul traffic and reached the Main Supply Route leading north from Seoul toward the city of Uijongbu. At the beginning of the Korean War, Uijongbu had briefly become famous when the North Korean Army poured across the 38th Parallel and steamrolled down the Eastern Corridor, the ROK Army fleeing in its path. A few ROK units regrouped and made a stand on the outskirts of Uijongbu. For a brief moment, the citizenry of Seoul was heartened, hoping their brave soldiers would hold the line. In the end, they did buy more time for refugees to escape south across the Han River, but eventually the South Korean Army was overrun. After that, Seoul was taken, and the North Korean Army of Kim Il-sung continued south. It was then that President Harry Truman made the decision to send US troops over from Japan to stop their advance. Uijongbu is still considered a strategic strongpoint, surrounded by both ROK and US military bases.
Ernie’s voice snapped me back to reality. “I’ve been thinking.”
“Uh-oh,” I said.
“Shirkey might not be dead.”
“Let’s hope not.”
“When that old broad wouldn’t get a room with him at the Number One Inn, maybe he raped her.”
“What? Where?”
“Near that trash bin.”
“Then what?”
“Then he had to get rid of her.”
“You think he killed her?”
“Could be.” Ernie slowed behind a convoy of five-ton ROK Army trucks, each towing a 155-millimeter howitzer. When he spotted an opening, he stepped on the gas and sped past the trucks one at a time, pulling in front of each one in turn to avoid oncoming traffic. Bored ROK Army soldiers with M16 rifles between their knees peered out of the canvas-covered backs of the trucks.
“What would he have done with the body?” I asked.
“Could’ve thrown it in the trash bin.”
“And somebody collected it without noticing her?”
“There’s a lot of trash in there.”
“Okay. And then?”
“He would’ve had nowhere to go,” Ernie said. “There are only two ways to get out of the country: across the DMZ, which is suicide, or through one of the points of international embarkation, which would be impossible to get through without a passport and a visa.”
“Right,” I agreed. GIs enter Korea with only their military identification cards and aren’t allowed to leave until they receive official departure orders.
“And the Koreans have him on a list now. They’re looking for him,” Ernie said.
“So what would he do?” I asked. “No money. No family. No help. No way out of the country.”
“Soon-hui,” Ernie said. “Maybe he went back to her and asked her to help him out. Meanwhile, he’s using connections to get a phony military ID and ration control plate. Once he has that, he can go on compounds where he’s not known and purchase stuff in the PX. Set himself up in the black market.”
“And when Soon-hui talked to us,” I said, “that shoeshine boy told Shirkey we were there, and he went back that night and offed her.”
“Could be.”
“But why? No matter what she told us, she couldn’t have hurt him much. He knows the Army’s looking for him, anyway.”
“Maybe they had a fight.”
“Maybe. Or maybe somebody else murdered Soon-hui.”
“Like who?”
“I don’t have any freaking idea.”
“So we leave it up to the Pusan KNPs?”
“Do we have a choice?”
“Not right now,” Ernie replied, pumping the breaks to slow for a truck piled high with Napa cabbage. He sped up and passed the truck. “The Chief of Staff expects us to look into all three disappearances. Werkowski from Camp Kyle, the floater, how long was he missing?”
I thumbed through the reports Captain Retzleff had given us. “Over two weeks.”
“How long you figure he was in the water?”
“Not long. The body was in good shape.”
“Stunk, though. And he was young, like the other two,” Ernie said.
I checked his date of birth. Not all buck sergeants were young. I’d seen forty-somethings who’d been in the Army twenty years and still hadn’t made sergeant stripes. But that was unusual, and becoming more atypical in the Army now that personnel operations were being centralized in Washington, DC. It was becoming difficult for a below-par soldier to find a place to hide. But Werkowski was in his twenties, and on track to be promoted quickly through the ranks.
We were now on the outskirts of Uijongbu. A sign said huanyong! Welcome! Beneath that were two Chinese characters that I didn’t have time to decipher because Ernie had hit the gas.
“Slow down!” I said.
He laughed, assuming I was joking.
We drove past a sign that said sokyu, or gasoline, then past a truck repair yard and a taxicab wash before entering Uijongbu proper. The city had been flattened by Commie artillery during the war, but more and more three- and four-story buildings were now popping up in the city center. There was even midafternoon congestion as Ernie drove us to the central traffic circle.
“Which way?” he asked.
“Right. Toward DivArty.” The US Second Infantry Division Artillery Headquarters at Camp Stanley.
After traveling about a mile east, just before reaching Camp Stanley, I asked Ernie to slow down again. This time he did. Acres of rice paddies stretched across the valley to our left.
“There it is,” I said, pointing. On our right, a whitewashed sign was stenciled with black letters: camp kyle, headquarters and company a, 4th maintenance battalion.
He turned right onto the narrow two-lane blacktop. At the front gate, we showed the MP our dispatch. He stared at us curiously, not accustomed to strangers, but waved us through. We parked near a circle of whitewashed stones surrounding three flagpoles—those of the United States, the Republic of Korea, and the United Nations Command—and as we climbed out of the jeep, dull faces gawked. We waded through what seemed like an entire battalion of open-mouthed confusion before we finally found someone who actually knew something about the late Sergeant Werkowski.
-6-
“I’m a whoremonger from way back.”
Master Sergeant Orville “Pug” Grayson stared at me with moist blue eyes and took a long drag on his cigarette, followed by a coughing jag that shook the loose, closely shaved flesh beneath his chin so badly, I thought his tonsils might pop out. When his throat cleared, he turned back to us and said, “I’ve seen ’em all.”
Ernie and I sat
in a tiny barroom called the Kimchi Club, tucked away in a narrow lane some ten twists and turns outside the front gate of Camp Kyle.
During our inquiries on base, everyone told us to talk to Pug Grayson. He was known as king of the ville rats in these parts, and after the cannon went off at seventeen hundred hours, we found him right where people told us he’d be. At a table in the Kimchi Club, in the corner opposite the jukebox.
“Did you see Werkowski with her?” Ernie asked.
“Did I,” Grayson replied. “They must’ve spent tens of hours together, talking like they were long-lost friends.”
“Every night?”
“Damn near. She was chatting him up. Having him buy her drinks. Probably borrowing a little money from him every night before he went back to the compound. Getting him ready for the big one.”
“The big hustle?”
“That’s what I thought,” Grayson said. “That she wanted a nice camera out of the PX. Or stereo equipment. Something he’d get in trouble for, but not until his DEROS.” Date of Estimated Return from Overseas. “Meanwhile, she’d be long gone.”
Just before GIs left Korea, their personal goods were inventoried to make sure they hadn’t sold any of the high-value rationed items they’d purchased out of the PX. If they’d sold something as expensive as a television or an imported wristwatch, or even given it away as a gift, they would be guilty of a ration control violation and could face non-judicial punishment or court-martial.
“But you were wrong,” I said.
“Was I.” Grayson shook his head. “She wanted way more than some expensive gift.”
“What’d she want?” Ernie asked.
“She was out for blood,” Grayson said.
He raised his hand and ordered us another round of drinks. A bored Korean barmaid brought them over, keeping her face impassive in an attempt to avoid conversation. As she set her tray down and served the drinks, Grayson patted her hand as if she were his granddaughter. Ernie paid the tab. Grayson tossed back his straight double shot of bourbon before starting on the beer.
“I like it here,” Grayson said, waving his cigarette at the small tables and short bar and half dozen booths that lined the far wall. “They don’t play the music too loud, and most of the business girls are old, like me. Well, not so old, but not youngsters, either. That’s one of the things that made Werkowski unusual—here, anyway. He was young. Only been in the army for two or three years. Most of the young troops hit the Miniskirt Club up the road, where they play all that hard rock crap, or worse, the Soul Train Club around the corner for the black troops. Me, I like it here. The music is quiet, the girls don’t wear hot pants, and if you don’t feel like talking, they leave you alone.”