by Ed Gorman
Atop her head, at a rakish angle, Miss O wore a black baseball cap. Using a magnifying glass, I examined the embroidery on the front. It was a unit designation: 545th Army Aviation Battalion, Company C. In smaller print on the side was a shorter row of letters. It took stronger light for me to make them out. Finally I did: Boson. I handed the photograph back to Ernie.
Ernie took another long look at the gorgeous Miss O and then slipped the photo back into his pocket. Something told me he had no intention of letting it go.
The air traffic controllers at the Camp Colbern aviation tower told us that Chief Warrant Officer Mike Boson was due in at sixteen thirty. Four thirty p.m. civilian time. Ernie and I were standing on the edge of the Camp Colbern helipad when the Huey UH-1N helicopter landed. As the blades gradually slowed their rotation, a crewman hopped out, and then the engine whined and the blades slowed further, and finally the co-pilot and then the pilot jumped out of the chopper. Chief Warrant Officer Mike Boson slipped off his helmet as he walked toward us and tucked it beneath his arm.
“The tower told me you wanted to talk to me,” he said.
Ernie and I flashed our identification. I asked if there was a more comfortable place to talk.
“No,” Boson said. “We talk here. What do you want?”
The chopper’s engine still buzzed. The crewman and the copilot hustled about on various errands, all the while listening to what we were saying. Boson, apparently, wanted it that way. We asked Boson where he had been last night, the night of the murder.
“In the O Club.” The officers’ club here on Camp Colbern. “For dinner, a couple of beers, and then to the BOQ for a good night’s rest.” The bachelor officers’ quarters.
“You didn’t visit Miss O Sung-hee?” Ernie asked.
“No.”
“Why not?”
Boson shrugged. “I don’t run the ville when I have duty the next morning.”
“You were scheduled to fly?”
“Yes. To Taegu to pick up the 19th Support Group commander. And then south from there.”
“When did you hear Miss O was dead?”
“Just before I left out this morning. Everyone was talking about it.”
“Did you realize you’d be questioned?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I knew her, but a lot of other guys knew her too.”
“Like who?”
He shrugged again. “I don’t know their names.”
We continued to question Warrant Officer Boson and he finally admitted that he’d spent more than just a few nights with Miss O Sung-hee and that he’d also escorted her and Miss Kang to the Namkang River the day the photograph Ernie showed him had been taken. They’d rented a boat and rowed to a resort island in the middle of the river and a few hours later returned to Paldang-ni, where Boson spent the night with Miss O.
“In her hooch?” I asked.
Warily, Boson nodded.
“It’s tiny,” Ernie said. “So where did Miss Kang sleep?”
For the third time, Boson shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“But she lived there, too, didn’t she?”
“Yes. But every time I stayed with Miss O, she’d disappear. I figured she bunked with the landlady who owns the hooch.”
“But you weren’t sure?”
“Why would I care?”
We asked if he knew Rothenberg. He didn’t.
“You don’t know a lot of things,” Ernie said.
Boson bristled. “I’m here to fly helicopters. Not to write a history of business girls in the ville.”
“And not to murder anyone?”
Boson dropped his helmet and leapt for Ernie’s throat. I thrust my forearms forward, blocked him and, although it was a struggle, managed to hold Boson back. The chopper crewman and the co-pilot ran over. I shoved Chief Warrant Officer Boson backward, they held him, and I dragged Ernie off of the helipad.
Night fell purple and gloomy over the village of Paldang-ni. But then a small miracle happened. Neon blinked to life: red, yellow, purple, gold. Some of it pulsating, some of it rotating, all of it beckoning to any young G.I. with a few dollars in his pocket to enter the Jade Lady Nightclub or the Frozen Chosun Bar or the Dragon Lady Teahouse. Tailor shops and brassware emporiums and drugstores and sporting goods outlets lined the narrow lanes. Rock music pulsated out of beaded curtains. A late autumn Manchurian wind blew cold and moist through the alleyways, but scantily clad Korean business girls stood in miniskirts and hot pants and low-cut cotton blouses, their creamy bronze flesh pimpled like plucked geese.
The women cooed as we passed, but Ernie and I ignored them and entered the first bar on the right: The Frozen Chosun. They served draft OB, Oriental Brewery beer, on tap. We jolted back a short mug and a shot of black market brandy, ignored the entreaties of the listless hostesses scattered around the dark enclosure, and continued on to the next dive. At each stop, I inquired about Miss O Sung-hee. Everyone knew her. They all knew that she’d been murdered brutally and they all assumed that the killer had been her jealous erstwhile boyfriend, an American G.I. by the name of Everett P. Rothenberg. But a few of the waitresses and bartenders and business girls I talked to speculated further. Miss O had Korean boyfriends. A few. Mostly men of power. Business owners in the bar district. But one of the men stood out. It was only after laying out cash on an overpriced sweetheart drink that one underweight bar hostess breathed his name. Shin, she said. Or that’s what everyone called him: Mr. Shin. He was a dresser and a player and had no visible means of support other than, she’d heard, playing a mean game of pool and beating up the occasional business girl who fell under his spell.
“A kampei,” I said to her. A gangster.
She shook her head vehemently. “No. Not that big. He small. How you say?” The overly made-up young woman thought for a moment and then came up with the appropriate phrase. “He small potatoes.”
In addition to buying her a drink, I slipped her a thousand won note. About two bucks. The tattered bill disappeared into the frayed waistband of her skirt.
When Ernie and I entered the King’s Pavilion Pool Hall, all eyes gazed at us.
There was no way for two Miguks to enter the second-story establishment surreptitiously. It was a large open room filled with cigarette smoke and stuffed with green felt pool tables from one end to the other. Narrow-waisted Korean men held pool cues and leaned over tables and lounged against walls, all of them puffing away furiously on cheap Korean cigarettes and all of them glaring at us, eyes narrow, lips curled into snarls, hatred filling the air even more thickly than the cloud of pungent tobacco smoke. This pool hall wasn’t for G.I.’s. It was for Koreans. The G.I.’s had their bars, plenty of them, about two blocks away from here in the foreigners’ bar district. Nobody, not even the man who collected money at the entranceway, wanted us here.
Ernie snarled back. “Screw you too,” he whispered.
“Steady,” I replied.
In Korean, I spoke to the bald-headed man collecting the fees. “Mr. Shin?” I asked. “Odiso?” Where is he?
The man looked blankly at me. Then he turned to the men in the pool hall. From somewhere toward the back, a radio hissed and a Korean female singer warbled a rueful note. I said again, louder this time, “Mr. Shin.”
The snarls turned to grimaces of disdain. Korean cuss words floated our way. A few men laughed. More of them turned away from us, lifting their cues, returning their attention to eight balls and rebound angles and pockets. Nobody came forward. Nobody would tell us who Mr. Shin was or, more importantly, where to find him.
Ernie and I turned and walked back down the stairway. At the next pool hall, we repeated the same procedure. With the same result.
Later that night, we stood at the spot where Miss O had been murdered.
The site was located atop a hill overlooking both Paldang-ni and Camp Colbern. On the opposite side of the hill, to the north, moonlight shone down on the sinuous flow of the Namha
n River. One or two boats drifted in the distance. Fishermen on their way home to straw-thatched huts. On the peak of the hill stood a tile-roofed shrine with a stone foundation and an enormous brass bell hanging from sturdy rafters. No one was there now, but I imagined that periodically Buddhist monks walked up the well-worn path to sound the ancient-looking bell.
“When did they find her?” Ernie asked.
I pulled out a penlight to read my tattered notebook.
“Zero five hundred this morning,” I said. “Just before dawn. By two Buddhist monks who came up here to say their morning prayers. She was lying right here.”
I pointed at the far edge of the stone foundation, nearest the river.
“Stabbed in the back once,” I continued. “And then four or five times in the chest. She bled to death.”
“And the murder weapon?”
“Never found. The KNPs assume it was a bayonet for two reasons. The size and depth of the entry wounds and the fact that Rothenberg, being a G.I., would’ve had access to one.”
“His bayonet was found in his field gear.”
“He could’ve stolen another one. Happens all the time.”
“Or,” Ernie replied, “the killer could’ve bought one on the black market.”
I nodded. Ernie was right. The KNPs were taking a big leap in locking up Rothenberg. So far, they had no hard evidence linking him to the murder. Still, public opinion had to be mollified. When a young Korean woman is murdered, someone has to be locked up, and fast. Otherwise, the public will wonder why they’re spending their hard-earned tax dollars on police salaries. Someone has to pay for the crime. Like the yin and the yang symbols on the national flag, harmony in the universe must be restored. Someone is murdered, someone must pay for that murder. Everett P. Rothenberg wouldn’t be the first American G.I. convicted in Korea of something that there was no definitive proof he’d actually done. But if that’s the case, harmony will come to his defense. If there’s little or no evidence proving that he did it, Rothenberg will receive a light sentence. Maybe four years in a Korean jail and then deportation back to the States. So far, no one — including me and Ernie — had any real idea who’d murdered Miss O Sung-hee.
Rothenberg’s alibi was sketchy. After finishing the day shift at the 304th Signal Battalion Commo Center, he’d eaten chow, showered, changed clothes, and headed to the ville. At about eighteen hundred hours, he’d arrived at the Dragon Lady Teahouse. There, he’d sat in a corner sipping on ginseng tea while Miss Kang and Miss O Sung-hee worked. Miss Kang doing most of the actual serving and preparation. Miss O sitting with customers — Korean businessmen, small groups of American officers — adding beauty and charm to their evening. Before the midnight curfew, according to Rothenberg, Miss O convinced him that she was too tired to see him that evening and he should return to Camp Colbern. He did. Since he returned to his base camp before the midnight-to-four curfew, the M.P.’s at the main gate didn’t bother to log in his name. Lights were already out in the barracks. In the dark, he’d undressed, stuffed his clothes and wallet in his wall locker, and hopped into his bunk. None of the other G.I.’s in the barracks had any recollection of his arrival.
Ernie walked over to the bell and rapped it with his knuckles. A low moan reverberated from the sculpted bronze, like the whispered sigh of a giant. We started back down the trail. It was steep. Boulders and thick brambles of bushes blocked our way on either side. We stepped carefully, inching forward, watching our step in the bright moonlight.
“Why’d we bother coming up here?” Ernie asked.
As he spoke, the earth shook. Just slightly. As if something heavy had thudded to the ground. I looked back. I could see nothing except Ernie staring at me quizzically, wondering why I had stopped. Then two more thuds. One after the other. Shallower this time, as if something were skipping forward, becoming louder, rolling toward us.
It emerged from the darkness above Ernie’s head, looking for all the world like a steamroller from hell.
“Watch out!” I shouted.
I leapt to the side of the trail and Ernie, not yet fully understanding, followed suit. He dove into a thicket of branches and I landed atop a small boulder and scrambled over it to the opposite side, away from the trail.
The noise grew deafening. One crash after another, and then an enormous metal cylinder flew out of the night, rolling down the trail, careening to the right and then left, barreling down the trail, and smashing everything in its path. It clipped the edge of the thicket and missed Ernie by a couple of feet. I crouched. The huge metal rolling pin crashed against the boulder and the cylinder flew over, only inches above my head. After it passed, Ernie and I sat up, staring at moonlight glistening off the cylinder. The careening monolith continued its pell-mell rush down the side of the hill, smashing an old wooden fence outside a small animal shelter and then hitting the shelter itself. Lumber flew everywhere. The cylinder kept rolling until it slowed and finally landed in a muddy rice paddy with a huge, sloppy splat.
“What the hell was that?” Ernie asked.
I rose slowly to my feet, checking uphill to make sure nothing more was coming at us. “The bell,” I said.
“The what?”
“The bronze bell. Come on.”
We ran back up the pathway. At the top of the hill, the shrine stood empty. Using my penlight, I examined the weathered ropes hanging beneath splintered rafters.
“Sliced,” I said.
“With what?” Ernie asked.
“Can’t be sure, but with something sharp. Maybe a bayonet.”
Mr. Shin found us.
So did about five of his pals. Light from a yellow streetlamp shone on angry faces, all of them belonging to young punks with grease-backed hair and sneers on their lips.
“Why are you looking for me?” Shin asked in Korean.
We stood in an alley not far from the King’s Pavilion Pool Hall Ernie and I had stopped in earlier today.
“Your girlfriend,” I told him, “Miss O Sung-hee, was murdered last night. Where were you while she was being killed?”
Shin puffed one time on his cigarette — overly dramatically — and then flicked the flaming butt to the ground. Ernie braced himself, about one long stride away from me, his side to the Korean man nearest him. He was ready to fight. Five to two were the odds, but we’d faced worse.
“Not my girlfriend,” Shin said at last, switching to English. “No more. Break up long time ago.”
“How long?”
“Maybe one month.”
A long time all right. “Miss Kang didn’t mention your name to the Korean police. Why not?”
“She no can do.”
“‘No can do?’ Why not?”
“She my … how you say? … sister.”
“She’s your sister?”
“Yes. Kang not her real name. Real name same as mine. Shin.”
“So you met Miss O through your sister?”
“Yes.”
“Why’d you break up with Miss O?”
Shin shrugged. “I tired of her.”
I didn’t believe that for a minute. Shin was a tough guy all right, and like tough punks all over the world there would be a certain type of woman available to him. Women who thought little of themselves. Women who, in order to build up their self-esteem, flocked toward men who were on the outs with the law. Men who they considered to be exciting. Korea, like everywhere else, had its share of this type of woman. But from everything I’d heard about Miss O Sung-hee, I didn’t believe she was that type. She went for cops and attorneys and helicopter pilots. Men of power. Men of real accomplishment. Not men who were broke and hung around pool halls.
“She dumped you,” I said.
“Huh?”
“Miss O. She think ‘I no like Shin anymore.’ She tell you karra chogi.” Go away.
Shin’s sneer twisted in anger.
“No woman tell Shin go away.”
Ernie guffawed and said to me, “Is this guy dumb or what?” He s
tepped past me and glared at Shin. “So you took Miss O to the top of the hill and you used a knife and you killed her.”
Shin realized that he was digging a hole for himself.
“No. No way. I no take. That night, I in pool hall. All night. Owner tell you. He see me there.”
Shin mentioned the pool hall owner’s name because even he knew that nobody would believe the testimony of him and his buddies. I crossed my arms and kept my gaze steady on Shin’s eyes. He was a frightened young man. And when he’d heard that Ernie and I were looking for him, he’d voluntarily presented himself. Both these points were in his favor. Could he have murdered Miss O Sung-hee? Sure he could have. But something told me that his alibi would hold up. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be standing here anxious to clear his name. If he’d murdered her, he’d be long gone. Still, I’d check with the pool hall owner as soon as I could.
Ernie had his own way of testing Shin’s sincerity. He stepped forward until his chest was pushed up almost against Shin’s. Ernie glared at Shin for a while and then snarled. “Out of my way.”
Shin seemed about to do something, to punch Ernie, but indecision danced in his glistening black eyes. Finally, he sighed and stepped back, making way for Ernie and me. Grumbling, his pals made way too.
We ran the ville.
Shots, beers, business girls on our laps. Ernie was enjoying the rock music and the girls and the frenzied crowds and gave himself over to a night of mindless pleasure. Me, I sipped on my drink, barely heard the music, and ignored the caresses of the gorgeous young women who surrounded me.
“What the hell’s the matter with you?” Ernie asked.
I shook my head.
“Come on,” he coaxed. “What could possibly be wrong? We’re away from the headshed, on temporary duty, we have a pocket full of travel pay, and we’re surrounded by booze and bands and business girls. What more could you possibly want?”