by Martin Limon
Within an hour, Sergeant First Class Potocki and I were in front of the Women’s Power Coalition. He walked around the building, studying the wiring, then jumped into the truck’s hydraulic lift bucket and raised himself above the level of the roof. Within minutes, he was fiddling with the cable and rehooking it to the utility pole.
Wang Ok-ja came outside. She wore a long woolen dress and a black scarf with embroidered peacocks. “Katie says you’ll fix this,” she said. “You have to.”
I didn’t argue with her, just smiled and nodded.
“Who ordered it turned off?” she asked.
I shrugged and said, “Someone who’s afraid of Mrs. Frankenton.”
“Are you afraid of Mrs. Frankenton?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because her husband needs me right now.”
“For what?”
“For a case I’m working on.” I looked her over. She was a sharp one. “You can help me on that case.”
“Me? How?”
“Some women were hurt,” I told her, “by GIs. I need to look at the details on the SOFA charges.”
She pulled the long ends of the scarf closer around her neck. “I don’t know.”
“Katie will approve it,” I said. “It’s to help the women.”
She glanced up at Potocki, who’d unhooked a few wires but appeared to be far from finished.
“I’ll call her,” she said.
“Please.”
She turned and hurried back into the office.
When Sergeant Potocki eventually climbed back down, he said, “They have juice now. And the good news is”—he pulled off his thick gloves—“I bypassed the meter. They won’t have to pay for it, and no one will know unless the utility techs stop by to inspect.”
“When will that be?” I asked.
“Maybe never.”
I thanked Potocki, offering him a handshake.
“You don’t need a ride back?” he asked.
“No. I’m going to stay awhile.”
Officially, I was at the Women’s Power Coalition on a disappearance and murder case.
What I was looking for was access to the records of women who’d filed claims with the Status of Forces Agreement Committee in recent years, specifically for domestic abuse involving US servicemen. In the SOFA data Riley had provided, I’d discovered that the WPC represented a number of these young women. No wonder 8th Army had come to view them as more than an annoyance. They had been marked as a legitimate threat.
The problem was that the data Riley had made available to me, all of it marked for official use only, had few particulars except the names and dates of each case. The accusations were left vague, like “assault” or “harassment” or the old standby “mutual confrontation.” As if a hundred-pound Korean woman would be eager to fight a two-hundred-pound American GI.
I needed to know the details of the accusations these women had made. Their stories, their understanding of what had taken place. And I knew there was a good chance the Women’s Power Coalition had these in their records.
I told Wang Ok-ja that I’d met Soon-hui on Texas Street in Pusan and become aware that she’d been beaten so badly by her GI boyfriend that she’d suffered a miscarriage. I explained that I was an investigator on a missing persons case, and I had reason to believe that several of the missing men had recently been up on SOFA charges. I asked for more information on Soon-hui’s incident and the others, with the promise that when I confronted the GIs involved, I’d be in a better position to bring them to justice. I neglected to mention Werkowski, whose actions had already caught up with him.
We sat at the wooden table in the center of the WPC common room. Miss Wang pursed her lips, studying me warily. “Why do you want to help these women?”
I switched to Korean, telling her how I felt. It didn’t matter to me whether the victim was Korean or American; justice shouldn’t serve one over the other.
“What will happen to the GI?” she asked me.
“He’ll be punished,” I said. How harshly, I couldn’t guess. Often, it was just a slap on the wrist: restriction to compound, pulling of an overnight pass. “And everyone will know what he did,” I added. Even if fellow GIs weren’t informed officially of the results of the SOFA investigation, gossip spread fast in the Army.
She remained silent, but nodded. Hoping to lighten the subject, I complimented her on her English. She told me she had spent time as a foreign exchange student in the States. She’d even helped to create a course on Korean literature at the University of Washington. She’d wanted to include more on Korea’s female writers, but in the end only the sijo poetry written by ancient kisaeng had been incorporated. Suddenly, she seemed to remember why I was there and said, “Okay, the files.”
She brought me to the next room, where I was greeted by a row of wooden file cabinets arranged in order by the hangul alphabet. I pulled out my notebook and went to work.
After a few minutes’ search, I hit pay dirt. A lot of it.
First was the file on Corporal Kenneth P. Holdren, the missing GI from the 44th Engineer Battalion in ASCOM. When Holdren’s Korean girlfriend had first become pregnant, he was furious. He’d walked out on her. Wouldn’t help her at all.
A few weeks later, she’d appeared at the Women’s Power Coalition branch office in Bupyong, outside of ASCOM City. They’d explained her options for abortion as well as adoption. But she didn’t have enough money to cover the hospital bills for either. The Women’s Power Coaliton helped her fill out a Status of Forces Agreement request for compensation. Not for the child—per standard policy, the US never compensates anyone for having a GI’s baby. But the request outlined the abuse that Holdren had heaped on her before he left. The specifics were difficult to read. Apparently Corporal Holdren, a dump truck driver, had a thing for beer bottles. Just for fun, he’d held his girlfriend down and forced them into her rectum and vagina. Sometimes the caps were off; sometimes they weren’t. Sometimes they were full of beer, and sometimes he’d filled them with something else.
Holdren testified that it was all a lie, and since there was no evidence against him, the SOFA claim had been dismissed.
Meanwhile, his ex-girlfriend’s pregnancy advanced. When she was seven months along, she visited the compound out of desperation. She convinced a GI at the front gate to escort her on base to the Enlisted Club and waited for Holdren there. She begged him for money. When he tried to ignore her, she began to cry and grabbed his arm, screaming for him to help her. The master-at-arms, reluctant to drag her outside in her condition, ordered Holdren to get her out, which he did. He grabbed her by the hair and pulled her out of the club and off compound through the pedestrian exit. According to her, he then let go of her, and his demeanor changed completely; he was as nice as he’d been at the start of their relationship. They walked together toward the room that a sympathetic landlady in the village had allowed her to use temporarily; pending the money she would receive when her GI boyfriend moved back in with her.
They never arrived. In a dark alley, Holdren beat her senseless, smashing her head against brick and leaving her for dead. Only she wasn’t dead. An hour or two later, she regained consciousness.
I read on, stomach churning, seeing this report as yet another example of how damaging our presence here in the ROK could be.
She then returned to the Wild Lady Nightclub, waddled up onstage, and, with the rock band still playing behind her, used a butcher knife to cut her own throat. She bled out before her body arrived at the hospital in Bupyong. No heroic efforts had been taken to save her child, since there was no head of family to sign for her or make an advance payment.
A month later, Corporal Holdren disappeared.
I tried to push the sordid details from my mind and analyze this new information through a broader lens. There was more than one s
imilarity between these cases.
Corporal Holdren had met his ex-girlfriend in the same place she’d committed suicide—the Wild Lady Nightclub, whose young bartender had sicced several members of the Sea Dragon Triad on us. Likewise, Specialist Shirkey in Pusan had been involved with Soon-hui, a business girl on Texas Street, in another nightclub controlled by the Sea Dragon Triad.
Could Werkowski’s disappearance from Camp Kyle—and eventual murder—have also involved the triad? But the Chinese gangs stuck close to port cities, since their main source of income was international smuggling, and Camp Kyle was outside Uijongbu, which was far enough inland that Korean gangs ruled the roost.
So how could Werkowski’s case possibly connect to the Sea Dragon Triad?
Two of the three missing American GIs had abused their pregnant Korean girlfriends. Holdren’s and Shirkey’s cases both involved territory controlled by the triad. The gumiho had been spotted with both Shirkey and Werkowski. The only place we weren’t sure whether or not the gumiho had been was ASCOM City, since we’d been chased out before we had the chance to interview any possible witnesses.
I had a question for the young Sea Dragon member in KNP custody.
The next morning, Ernie and I drove to KNP headquarters in downtown Seoul. Officer Oh greeted us in the lobby and walked us downstairs to the interrogation rooms, where Mr. Kill was waiting. “You have a question for our young Fujianese mobster?”
“Yes,” I said. “Camp Kyle. Does the Sea Dragon Triad have any investments in that area?”
“Interesting,” Kill said. “Camp Kyle, on the northern edge of Uijongbu?”
“Yes,” I replied.
“Let’s ask,” he said.
He told us to wait. We sat down on the hard wooden benches we’d slept on and tried to ignore the screams once again. A half hour later, Kill returned.
“He doesn’t know,” he said. “Bam’s sure he’s not holding anything back. And his lack of knowledge actually makes sense; if the Sea Dragons were expanding their operation to Uijongbu, they wouldn’t entrust that information to a low-level thug fresh from overseas.”
“Is there any other way for us to find out?” I asked. “In the other two cities where our GIs went missing, they were involved with business girls at Sea Dragon operations.”
He nodded. “I’ll send a man up to Uijongbu to see if anything suspicious has been going on there in recent months.”
“Good. And their new operation,” I said. “The one they’re bringing more men in for. Any progress as of yet?”
“Not yet. I have people working on it, but the Sea Dragon Triad is very secretive.”
Ernie had been quiet up till now, but rose suddenly from the bench and began to pace. “Why not check Itaewon?” he said.
We both looked at him. “What do you mean?”
“Think about it. If you’re a gang with pride and you’ve been tussling with the Korean gangs over money and territory, you’re going to want to spit in their face and dare them to do something about it.” He continued to pace. “As it stands now, you have a run-down nightclub or two down on Texas Street in Pusan and a titty bar you call a teahouse in Inchon, plus the Wild Lady Nightclub in ASCOM City. All those places are fine, but they’re out on the fringes. So where’s the center of the action? Where’s the next place you’re going to want to expand?”
“Seoul,” I said.
“Right. The capital, where all the glamour is. So you can show the world how much money you’re making, how smart you are and, more importantly, how tough you are. And the best bar district in Seoul is . . . ?”
He waited for us.
“Myong-dong,” I answered.
“Yep. But that’s smack in the middle of downtown Seoul, and it’s for Koreans. Not an international crowd. So maybe the Sea Dragons aren’t quite ready for Myong-dong yet. What would be the preliminary step? The second largest bar district in the city?”
“Itaewon,” I said.
“Right. Every foreigner in the country eventually gravitates there. And Itaewon is also likely because thousands of American GIs hang out there. Not to mention that all these disappearances have happened in GI villages.”
“And Itaewon is the biggest GI village of all,” I replied.
Ernie nodded.
“Maybe you’re right,” I said. “But where does that leave us? There have to be a hundred bars and nightclubs jammed into Itaewon.”
“So we narrow our choices,” Ernie said. “If the Sea Dragon Triad is bringing in muscle as part of a big push, they must be starting something new. So what’s new in Itaewon? What’s everybody talking about?”
I thought about it. “I don’t know,” I admitted.
“Christ, Sueño. You’ve been working too hard. There’s a new trendy nightclub out there that has people standing in line to get in.”
“Standing in line?”
I’d never heard of such a thing. On New Year’s Eve, maybe, but usually the bars in Itaewon were begging for business.
“An American guy runs it. Or at least, he’s the face at the door. Don Yancey. You’ve seen him around compound. Mr. Fancy Pants. Slicked-back hairdo. Always wearing nice clothes. Imported from home, not from the PX or shops around here.”
“The guy Strange hates.”
“Right. He holds court every day at the 8th Army Snack Bar. Late in the day, around close of business. A couple of hours before he opens his place, the Harbor Lights Club.”
“That one,” I said. “I’ve heard of it. Out on the MSR, just on the edge of Itaewon.”
“Hot and cold running women,” Ernie said. “And most of them aren’t even business girls. Guys tell me that there’s so much free action at the Harbor Lights Club that it’s cutting into Itaewon’s bottom line. The local business girls are thinking of organizing a demo.” A protest demonstration.
“But this guy, Don Yancey,” I said, “he can’t actually own the Harbor Lights, can he?” The ROK government requires that any long-term business lease be cosigned by a Korean.
“I guess not,” Ernie replied.
We both turned to Mr. Kill.
“I’ll get the information on the business title.” He called for Officer Oh.
She trotted lightly down the stairs.
“Nei,” she said, bowing with hands clasped in front of her skirt. Mr. Kill told her what he wanted, and she bowed again and marched back upstairs.
“It could take awhile,” he told us. “Some of these land deeds are convoluted.”
There it was again—his displaying a vocabulary that was beyond the ken of most of the Americans we worked with.
“Once we find this information,” Kill asked us, “what will the next step be?”
Often, I felt as if Mr. Kill steered our conversations like a professor conducting a seminar. It didn’t bother me; I was happy to learn from someone who essentially held a PhD in criminal investigation.
Ernie, however, seemed to have lost patience with cooperative analysis. “You’re the head honcho,” he said curtly.
Mr. Kill smiled.
“I have an idea,” I said.
“Don’t you always,” Ernie replied.
“Well, like you said, I don’t get out much. About time I met this new king of Itaewon. I think I’ll pay Don Yancey a visit and check out the action at the Harbor Lights Club.”
“I’ll go with you,” Ernie said.
“No. I think I have to go this one alone.”
-14-
When we returned to the CID office, I convinced Riley to take me to 8th Army Personnel for a meeting with Smitty. Once we arrived, we were ushered into a small office cluttered with stacks of paperwork and three-ring binders full of 8th Army supplements to US Army regulations. Fronting his desk, Smitty had a mother-of-pearl nameplate that identified him as the NCO in Charge, Personnel Operations. He wa
s a big man with a bushy mustache, probably in his late thirties, and clearly already balding. He wore his khaki uniform proudly, and his Master Sergeant stripes shone yellow off his sleeve.
“What can I do for you two gentlemen?” He leaned back in his chair, lacing his thick fingers across his belly.
I told him.
He laughed out loud. “By God, that’s a first.”
“Hey,” Riley said, motioning with his hand. “Keep it down, Smitty. This one’s on the QT.”
“QT?”
“You know. Hush-hush.”
“Oh, getting all British on me, huh? Okay, I’ll keep a stiff upper lip.” Smitty guffawed at his own joke. Eyes filled with mirth, he looked at us again. “You have to admit it’s a rich one. Sergeant Sueño here wants to bring himself up on SOFA charges?”
“ASAP,” Riley said. “Here, I’ve written up a scenario.” He tossed a sheet of paper across Smitty’s desk, and Smitty snapped it up like a barracuda capturing its prey. He read as fast as his flitting eyes allowed.
I turned to Riley. “You didn’t tell me you wrote something up.”
“When you called me from downtown and told me how urgent it was, I figured I’d get a jump on it.”
“Good Lord,” Smitty said, looking at me agape with something like newfound respect. “You did all this? To a helpless woman?”
“I didn’t do anything,” I said. “The idea is to make people think I did something. That some abused Korean business girl has brought me up on SOFA charges.”
“Who the hell do you think is going to read this? Nobody but a bunch of old farts on the SOFA Committee.”
“Maybe,” I said.