The Nine-Tailed Fox

by Martin Limon

  At dawn, after receiving the results of the interrogation, Ernie and I caught a cab back to Yongsan Compound. In the barracks latrine, I showered, shaved, brushed my teeth thoroughly, and gargled with mouthwash. Back in my room, I donned fresh clothes. Feeling somewhat human again, I walked downhill to the CID office. The place was dark, empty; even Riley hadn’t arrived yet. I unlocked the door, flicked on the lights, and sat down at my favorite Olivetti typewriter. Carefully layering a clean white piece of paper atop both green and pink carbon-covered sheets, I rolled them into the carriage. After thinking a moment, I began to type.

  I started the report by detailing our trip to Hialeah Compound. There was Shirkey’s ex-girlfriend Soon-hui, who’d claimed she lost her baby. I also mentioned the fried fish vendor, Auntie Suh, and her description of the woman who was likely the last person to see Specialist Shirkey before his disappearance. I didn’t mention the dog tag the KNPs had found near Suwon. No sense getting anyone excited up at the head shed. That was the type of information that could convince an officer trying to make a name for himself to send a search battalion to trample the area, generating a lot of noise that would just alert other higher-ups. Eventually, everybody and his brother would be ordering us this way and that—a lot of movement with little result. Best to keep quiet. I also declined to mention Soon-hui’s death. It didn’t fall under 8th Army’s jurisdiction. Besides, that was more of a private matter, one I would avenge on my own.

  I sat back and reviewed what I’d written.

  As it stood now, the honchos at 8th Army were afraid to get involved any further than they had to into these disappearances. No one with ambition wanted their fingerprints on a case that had already resulted in disaster—namely, Werkowski’s death. That left us free to investigate unimpeded. Or at least, as unimpeded as one can be in the Army.

  But I also knew that as soon as someone caught wind of any progress we were making, both the Provost Marshal and the Chief of Staff, plus anybody else who could reasonably nose their way in, would line up to start telling us what to do. Best to head them off now, make them avoid the case like the plague. And I knew just how to do that.

  In my report, I added an extra line break, typed in Roman numeral two, and dedicated an entire section to the gumiho.

  I cited testimony from eyewitnesses in the ville outside Camp Kyle about an older woman seducing Sergeant Werkowski and possibly driving him off in her chauffeured sedan. Then I laid out the legend of the gumiho, the nine-tailed, thousand-year-old fox that had been transformed into a woman. Anyone at the head shed who read this would write us off as crazy. In fact, 8th Army honchos would find this so embarrassing, they might pull us off the case. Which was why I’d asked Mr. Kill to submit a formal request to the ROK Ministry of National Defense for me and Ernie specifically to be assigned to work with the KNPs for the duration of the investigation. Based on experience, I knew 8th Army wouldn’t reject such a request, not when it came from such a high level in the Korean government. And not when a denial would be reviewed personally by the US Ambassador to the ROK.

  From 8th Army’s point of view, what were two crackpot low-level GIs, more or less? To avoid diplomatic brouhaha, they’d certainly let us go. And more importantly, by not raising an objection one way or the other, fewer people would know that the initial CID report was largely centered on rumors of a mythical creature.

  When I’d finished with Camp Kyle, I started on ASCOM City, but by then Riley had shown up.

  “’Bout time!” he shouted, seeing me at the typewriter. “I’ll burn copies of these and get them sent in. You done yet?”

  “Almost,” I said.

  Next to me, hidden from Riley, sat the pink carbon copy of the pages I’d completed. I always kept an extra set for my files—an accordion folder in the back of my wall locker in the barracks.

  Riley busied himself with the big silver coffee urn in the back of the room. We had forty-five minutes until the zero-eight-hundred start of the business day. As the urn started to perk, Riley wiped down the counter and shuffled a few things around, and on the way back to his desk, he glanced at me. “What the hell happened to you?” he asked.

  I shrugged.

  “Some dolly out in the ville get fed up and hit you with a mongdungi?”

  A mongdungi was a cudgel used to beat dirt out of laundry. And occasionally for other purposes, like disciplining recalcitrant husbands. I was impressed Riley knew the word and wondered if I’d been underestimating him.

  “Actually,” I said, still typing, “I was doing my job.”

  “Great,” Riley replied, plopping down in his seat. “I’ll put you in for a Purple Heart.”

  The coffee stopped perking, leaving the room silent just as I finished my report. I wanted to give it another once-over, maybe make some changes, but Riley wouldn’t hear of it.

  “If I don’t get this in right now,” he told me, “Colonel Brace’ll ream me another asshole.”

  “You have such an eloquent way of phrasing things,” I said.

  We both made our way for the coffee urn. I pulled a mug and offered it to Riley, then made one for myself.

  Riley squinted at me for a moment. “What the hell’s wrong with you, Sueño?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re too freaking polite.”

  “Spanish manners.”

  Riley didn’t reply, but gave me a hard stare. Finally, he said, “You don’t belong here, Sueño.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you don’t belong in the army. You should be doing something else. Like something at a university, maybe. Or something artistic.”

  “Thanks.”

  Riley grimaced. “Don’t think that’s a compliment.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “It’s me telling you not to fuck it up for the rest of us. Colonel Brace is a good man. He doesn’t need you embarrassing him all the time.” Before I could respond, he went on. “And you’d be better off doing what the bosses told you to do for once. Just shut up and finish the job.”

  I could’ve defended myself. I could’ve told him about Soon-hui and the way she’d been treated, the cruel fate she’d been subject to. I could’ve told him about the Women’s Power Coalition being jerked around just because two officers’ wives couldn’t get along. I could’ve told him about how Ernie and I had to fight and connive our way through every damned investigation just to make sure we’d be allowed to do what was needed to carry out actual justice. Instead, I said nothing. It was all too long, too complicated. And I knew that Staff Sergeant Riley would never care enough to understand. He followed the lifer’s motto: just do what the Army tells you to and shut up.

  On the other hand, I couldn’t let him get away with insulting me, not even with something as oblique as this. Not in this man’s army. I set my coffee mug down and stretched myself to my full height, angrily looming over him.

  He paused, realizing he’d gone too far. “Okay,” he said. “Sorry, Sueño. But you act different from everyone else.” When I didn’t answer, he elaborated. “You’re too proper. You give a shit about things like spelling and grammar. And you’re nice to Miss Kim, even though you’re not trying to get in her pants. You just seem like you’re in the wrong place,” he continued. “Like you don’t belong here.”

  “Try to kick me out,” I challenged.

  Riley looked down at his coffee. “Sorry,” he said again.

  But I understood what he was getting at. Sometimes I felt it, too. I didn’t belong in the Army. I was different. For most soldiers, the rank they manage to achieve is their only measure of self-worth. But sometimes to me, the more rank you’ve achieved, the more you’ve compromised your ethical standards, the more you’ve done whatever the brass told you to do, regardless of how stupid or how harmful, and the more of your soul has been auctioned off to the demons of war.

&nbs
p; “I’ll read the report,” Riley said. Then he turned and walked back to his desk.

  Another thing I’d left out of my report was the result of Mr. Bam’s interrogation. It turned out the Chinese thug we’d captured in Inchon was a recent recruit of the Sea Dragon Triad. He’d been smuggled into Korea illegally aboard a Hong Kong fishing vessel less than two months ago as part of a large influx of young toughs, recruited mostly from Fujian Province in southern China. The Sea Dragon Triad was expanding its manpower.

  The question was, why? What did the Sea Dragon Triad have planned that would require more human capital?

  Mr. Bam had hammered away on that point—quite literally—but the young Fujianese gangster repeated over and over that he didn’t know anything.

  “He probably doesn’t have that information,” Mr. Kill told me and Ernie just before dawn. “He’s also never heard of any person who matches the description of the woman we’re calling the gumiho, though when our Chinese translator said the word in his Fujian dialect, he seemed quite shocked. According to him, Chairman Mao looks down on such folklore, but he admitted that before his parents died, they believed in such things.”

  “So he does, too,” I said.

  “Of course. The Communists have wiped out many institutions, but amongst the uneducated peasantry in China, old superstitions still run deep.”

  Ernie found this irrelevant to the case. “Okay, so he doesn’t know anything. What’s our next step? He’s never heard of the gummy whore and knows nothing about the missing GIs. So this was all a waste of time?”

  “No,” Mr. Kill said. “Not a waste of time. The Sea Dragon Triad is bringing in more muscle, which means they have a bigger plan—a new enterprise, or something they’re protecting. I suspect you two have already stumbled onto part of that, which is why they went after you in ASCOM City.”

  “Do you have any idea what it is?”

  “They could be expanding their smuggling operation. The more product they sneak into China, the more money they make.”

  “What would that have to do with missing GIs?”

  “They could have witnessed something they weren’t supposed to,” Mr. Kill said.

  “Unlikely,” I said. “None of them were doing the type of work that would bring them into contact with any sort of smuggling operation.”

  “Or maybe the triad needs insurance,” Mr. Kill said. “Hostages. Maybe they need something they can barter if things go wrong.”

  I sat up straighter on the bench, staring at him. Kill knew he’d caught my attention. “And what could be more valuable to Communist China,” I asked, “than bona fide members of the most powerful military in the world?”

  “Perhaps,” Mr. Kill said, “but they’d risk US retaliation.” He shook his head. “We still don’t know.”

  “Shirkey’s ex-girlfriend in Pusan,” I said, “worked in a bar controlled by the Sea Dragon Triad.”

  “Soon-hui?” Ernie asked.

  “Right. And she turned up dead. In ASCOM City, Corporal Holdren, another of the missing GIs, was apparently seeing a woman who worked at the Wild Lady Nightclub, also controlled by the Sea Dragon Triad.”

  “And when we snooped around there,” Ernie said, “they attacked us.”

  “It’s tenuous,” I said, “but there seems to be some link between this gumiho, the missing GIs, and the Sea Dragon Triad.”

  “Right,” Mr. Kill said. “So what we need to do is track down the gumiho.”

  “How do we draw her out?” Ernie asked.

  “We need bait.” Mr. Kill gazed back and forth between us. “She seems most interested in Americans.”

  We both looked at Ernie.

  “Oh, no,” Ernie responded. “A rich woman with means and education? Not my department. That’s you, Sueño.”

  Ernie was right. Mr. Kill and I both remained silent.

  “The real question is,” Ernie said, “how do we find her?”

  We looked at Mr. Kill, who shrugged. “She operates in your GI villes, as you call them. That’s your area of expertise, not mine. Which is the justification I used in the formal request for you both to temporarily join our investigative team.”

  “I think I know how we might be able to find her,” I said.

  “How?” asked Ernie.

  “It’s a long shot. I’ll tell you when we get back to the compound.”

  Ernie and I rose from the bench.

  “Thanks for the fine accommodations,” Ernie told Mr. Kill.

  “Anytime,” he answered.

  -13-

  Later that morning, Riley received the SOFA complaint records he’d requested from Smitty. I was going over them when Katie Allsworthy stormed into the office. Her tiny frame hovered over my desk.

  “You!” she said, pointing a manicured forefinger at me. “You told Mrs. Frankenton that you took the refrigerator back to the Women’s Power Coalition.”

  The idea that I’d have the occasion to communicate with someone as high up in 8th Army as Mrs. Frankenton, President of the Officers’ Wives Club and wife of the Chief of Staff, was so ridiculous that I didn’t bother to answer. Instead, I sat dumbfounded with my hands over the SOFA report.

  “And the other bozo who went out there with you. What’s his name?”

  Again, I didn’t answer.

  Mrs. Allsworthy continued, “That witch Frankenton had our power shut off. Apparently, she mentioned the refrigerator to one of the officers in the ROK Army Liaison committee, who mentioned it to an official in the Ministry of Energy, who mentioned it to the lowlifes who actually control the switch. And they turned off our section on the grid. Because of you.” She was pointing at me again. “So you’re going to fix it. Do you understand me? I want the electricity at the Women’s Power Coalition back on today, before close of business, and I’m holding you personally responsible. What’s your name? Sween-o? My husband will have you up on charges so fast—insubordination to the wife of a superior officer. Malingering. Spreading rumors detrimental to good order and discipline. You name it, you’ll be charged with it. Do you understand me, soldier?”

  Colonel Brace had to be hearing this from his office down the hall. But no sound came from that direction. Staff Sergeant Riley, however, felt some responsibility to protect one of his troops.

  “Ma’am,” he said, stepping out from behind his desk. “Maybe if we talked this over . . .”

  Without even looking at him, Katie Allsworthy said, “You keep out of this. I want an affirmative from this man, and I want it now.”

  Miss Kim was practically cowering behind her hangul typewriter. She was the sole earner for herself and her mother, and the thought of being caught up in anything that would cost her this admin job terrified her. There was no social safety net in South Korea, unless you counted standing in the street and begging.

  Ernie had quietly placed himself five paces behind Mrs. Allsworthy. I could almost read his mind. If she pulled a weapon or made a move to strike me, he’d be on her. But her attack wasn’t physical. She was quickly losing precious resources for the WPC, so in her desperation to protect the women there and their cause, she’d chosen to resort to threats. I wondered whether she might actually take these accusations to her husband or someone even higher up in the 8th Army hierarchy.

  Katie Allsworthy was still waiting for her answer. My irritation with the situation had slowly graduated into fury; I’d wanted neither of the assignments with the refrigerator, and electricity at the Women’s Power Coalition was no more my responsibility than the man in the moon’s. But then I remembered something I’d seen in the summary of Status of Forces complaints I’d been studying.

  “When was your electricity turned off?” I asked.

  “Nine o’clock this morning.”

  “Did somebody come out to unhook it, or was it disconnected remotely?”

  “I don
’t know. There were workmen there.”

  So somebody had gone out to manually shut off their power. I figured as much. Remote switches weren’t common in Korea.

  “Okay, so I’ll have to talk to one of your associates. Who was there?”

  “Wang Ok-ja—you’ve met her. She tried to fight them off.”

  “All right,” I said. “Tell her to stand by. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  Mollified, Katie Allsworthy stepped away, briskly slid on her overcoat, cinched its belt tightly around her waist, and marched out of the room.

  In the silence that followed, Ernie was the first to speak. “I would’ve decked her.”

  Riley whiffed roundhouse punches through the air.

  Frowning, Miss Kim hurried outside to the ladies’ room.

  Colonel Brace’s office remained silent as a tomb.

  I sat back down. Ernie placed both hands on the edge of my desk. “Why’d you promise to get their electricity back?” When I didn’t answer, he said, “Oh, I know. You want to see that yoboseiyo out there. What’s her name? Sandy Koufax—the one with the fastball.”

  “It’s not that,” I said.

  “Don’t lie to me, Sueño.”

  “Okay, maybe that’s part of it.”

  “And the rest?”

  “I think they’ve got something for us out there.”

  “Like what?”

  “Information that can help us track down Strange’s new obsession.”

  “The gummy whore?”

  “Just so,” I replied.

  Ernie walked over to the Moyer Recreation Center and caught the military bus that ran once per hour over to the Army Support Command in Bupyong. He promised me he’d stay away from the Wild Lady Nightclub and take a cab from ASCOM to the United Seaman’s Service Club in Inchon to retrieve our jeep.

  Riley came through for us with another fifty bucks in petty cash allotment, so Ernie had stopped at 8th Army Finance on his way to the bus station to pick up some money.

  A few months back, Ernie and I had busted a guy named Potocki for a black market violation. When we found out his wife was sick, we let him off with a warning and didn’t file official charges. He was grateful and knew that he owed us one. As it turned out, he was an electrician for the 19th support group, maintenance, and repair facility. As Katie Allsworthy had chewed me out, I’d decided he would be getting a call. He answered on the first ring, and promised to meet me with his repair truck, just asking where and when.