The Nine-Tailed Fox

by Martin Limon

  Back in Seoul, there was talk of dropping Shirkey’s SOFA charge, since he’d “suffered enough.” That is, until I made a call to Katie Allsworthy. After sputtering and calling me three kinds of a sonofabitch, she finally listened as I explained what was in motion with Shirkey, which spurred her to action. She proceeded to raise hell in the hallowed halls of the 8th United States Army, and a day later, the JAG office announced that, despite his injuries, Shirkey’s SOFA case would move forward as normal.

  He’d shown no mercy to his ex-girlfriend Soon-hui when he’d beaten her so badly that she’d lost a child; it was fitting that none be shown to him.

  Mr. Kill called and told me that the Pusan KNPs’ investigation into Soon-hui’s death had stalled. There was a loaded pause as I absorbed with his unspoken words—her murder would never officially be solved.

  “We already know it was them,” I said. “Punishing her for talking to me.”

  “Yes,” Mr. Kill replied, his voice low and steady. He paused for me to recover and finally said, “We can’t save everyone.”

  “No.” I sighed. “We can’t.”

  Staff Sergeant Palinki received a letter of commendation for his actions at the Port of Inchon. Everyone stood at attention as Riley read off the citation, and Colonel Brace shook Palinki’s hand before a couple dozen of us MPs and CID agents filed past to offer our congratulations.

  That letter would be placed into his personnel file, and would go a long way toward counterbalancing the letter of reprimand he’d received for beating the hell out of those would-be rapists in Itaewon. The best part, as far as Palinki was concerned, was that he was now officially out of the arms room and back on the street.

  His big face beamed as he shook my hand. “Busting heads again, bro.”

  I slapped him heartily on the shoulder.

  -22-

  “Mandatory,” Staff Sergeant Riley said.

  “What are you talking about?” Ernie said. “They can’t force us to go on sick call.”

  “Says here they can.” He pointed to the memorandum. “And Colonel Brace has chopped off on it.” Meaning he’d approved it.

  “This makes no sense,” Ernie said.

  “Sense or not,” Riley replied. “You and Sueño are to report to the One-Two-One psych ward at zero nine hundred this morning.”

  “They think we’re crazy?”

  “If they don’t, I do,” Riley said. “New rule. After every incidence of violence, you’re required to be evaluated by a mental health professional. For traumatic stress.”

  “How about you? You were there.”

  “I’m perfectly sane,” Riley said. “Besides, this memorandum doesn’t mention me. Just you two.”

  I glanced over at Miss Kim, who studiously avoided my gaze.

  In the end, Ernie relented. Fifteen minutes before the appointment, we walked outside to the jeep. He switched on the ignition and silently drove us over to the 121st Evac. After we checked in at the psych ward, Ernie was taken into an examination room by a nurse. Five minutes later, I was called into the doctor’s office. Behind a small gray desk, looking sharp in her dress-green uniform and white lab coat, was Captain Leah Prevault, MD.

  “Who told you?” I asked.

  “It’s a secret,” she said, grinning.

  “It was Miss Kim, wasn’t it?”

  She laughed. “I knew I couldn’t hide it from the Great Detective.”

  I shuffled in my seat. “She worries about us.”

  “So do I,” she replied, looking up from my records.

  “I’m glad to hear it. Why didn’t you write?”

  “I did.”

  “Not often.”

  “No.” She looked down for a moment, then back at me. “It’s a poor excuse, but Tripler’s psych ward has been backlogged for so long that we’ve been working triple shifts trying to catch up. I’d planned to write more, but I missed you, and wanted to talk things over in person instead.”

  “You took TDY?” I asked. Temporary Duty.

  “Yes. My commander’s been planning on sending me back to the One-Two-One for some time. They don’t have anyone assigned to the psych department here anymore. But he kept on putting it off because of the caseload in Honolulu. When Miss Kim called and told me what you’d been going through, I told him I couldn’t wait any longer.”

  “How long are you here for?”

  “Two weeks.”

  “Tonight,” I said. “Will you have dinner with me?”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you still remember how to use chopsticks?”

  “I was taught by the best.”

  We set a time and place. Far from the compound, away from the prying eyes of the 8th United States Army. Then someone knocked on the door. Leah called for them to enter and a medic hustled in, carrying a bundle of paperwork. “Sorry to interrupt.”

  “No problem, Jerry. We’re done here, anyway.”

  I stood up from my chair and saluted Doctor Prevault. She smiled and returned my salute.

  Ernie was waiting outside in the lobby. “Did you pass?”

  “Yeah,” I said as we started walking toward the exit. “Clean bill of health.”

  “Me, too. The medic said I didn’t even have to see the doctor.”

  “Nope. No point.”

  “Just answered a few questions, is all. No headaches, no bad dreams, no loss of appetite. Nice to know I’m not nuts.” Ernie thought it over. “Nobody’s going to believe it, though.”

  “That you’re not nuts?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I wouldn’t,” I answered.

  I must have been silent for a while after that, because Ernie asked, “Something wrong?”

  “Nothing. But I saw Leah.”

  Ernie blinked. “You mean . . . ?”

  I nodded.

  “How is she?”

  “In fine form.”

  He grinned. “Better be careful, messing around with an officer.”

  “Don’t worry, I will. How about you and Captain Retzleff?”

  “Good news on that front.”

  “Yeah? What?”

  “Her fiancé got promoted.”

  “Her fiancé?”

  “Yep. Stationed up at Division. Just found out he made the list for major.”

  As we walked toward the jeep, I stared at Ernie, dumbfounded.

  “We’re both very proud of him,” he said.

  Before she left Korea, Doctor Leah Prevault and I discussed Moon Guang-song. Based on as full a description as I could give of her past and behavior, Doctor Prevault speculated that her violent acts might not only repeat themselves, but could grow worse after the successive displacements she’d suffered—the loss of her child, then her father, and now her home. She couldn’t make a final diagnosis without a direct examination, but thought long-term psychological analysis and care, possibly even in an institution, might very well be required.

  “In other words, she’s nuts,” Ernie said.

  “I guess so.”

  “And she’s obsessed with you.”

  I shifted uncomfortably in my seat.

  Ernie looked at me. “Well, she is, isn’t she?”

  “How would I know?”

  We were driving toward Itaewon, chasing after a PX taxi whose customer was a dependent wife whom we suspected was headed to sell a load of PX-purchased goods on the black market. Back to mundane life.

  “You think Mr. Kill will ever catch her?” Ernie asked me.

  “If he doesn’t, we will,” I said.

  “How?” Ernie glanced at me, momentarily taking his eyes off the road. “The Provost Marshal has taken us off the case, and we’re back to black market detail. Werkowski’s and Holdren’s bodies have been shipped back to the States, the bugle has sounded, and their fam
ilies have been paid thirty-thousand dollars each in Servicemen’s Group Life Insurance.”

  “Watch out,” I said, pointing to a kimchi cab swerving between lanes.

  Ernie turned back to the wheel, but he was still upset. “We’re not assigned to the case—nobody is. How the hell do you imagine we’d catch somebody with that much money and that much mobility, plus an incredibly powerful Chinese gang to protect her?”

  I was silent for a moment. Ernie came to a stop at a red light. “I’ll think of something,” I said.

  “You’re nuts, Sueño. The honchos at Eighth Army don’t want to hear it anymore. It’s an embarrassment. GIs murdered by a mythical creature and a gang leader. They just want to bury the whole thing. So do the Koreans.”

  “They can’t forget it,” I said. “Neither can I. We saw Werkowski’s and Holdren’s bodies. We know what she did.”

  Behind us, horns blared. Startled, Ernie shoved the jeep into gear and rolled forward.

  “Okay, I saw it,” he said. “But I’m not like you. I don’t want to keep hitting my head against a brick wall for a thankless job that nobody wants done.”

  “She’ll do it again,” I said.

  “Where? When?”

  “Where we least expect it, and when it’s most inconvenient.”

  Ernie hung a right at the road leading to Itaewon. “How do you know?”

  “I know her.”

  Ernie pulled the jeep over, wrapped the chain welded to the floorboard around the steering wheel, and padlocked it securely. He peered at me. “What the hell happened to you when you were with that broad?”

  “Staying with her—it was kind of like being given a gift.”

  “Some gift,” Ernie said.

  Together we walked up the narrow lane, ready to bust an unsuspecting woman for selling six cans of Spam and two jars of soluble creamer on the Korean black market.