by Ed Gorman
“A clue,” I answered.
“A clue?”
“A clue as to who murdered Miss O Sung-hee.”
Ernie shrugged. “Maybe the KNPs were right all along. Maybe it was Rothenberg.”
And maybe not.
When the midnight curfew came along, G.I.’s either scurried back to Camp Colbern or paired up with a Korean business girl. Ernie found one for me, and the four of us went to their rooms upstairs in some dive. In the dark, I lay next to the girl. Ignoring her. Finally, I slept.
Just before dawn, a cock crowed. I sat up. The business girl was still asleep, snoring softly. I rose from the low bed and slipped on my clothes, and without bothering to wake Ernie, I walked over to the Korean National Police station.
The sun was higher when I returned. After gathering the information I needed at the police station, I’d walked over to Camp Colbern. There, in the billeting room assigned to me and Ernie, I’d showered, shaved, and then gone to the Camp Colbern snack bar. Breakfast was ham, eggs, and an English muffin. Now, back in Paldang-ni, I pounded on the door to Ernie’s room. The business girl opened it and let me in. Ernie was still asleep.
“Reveille,” I said.
He opened his eyes and sat up. “What?”
“Time to make morning formation, Sleeping Beauty.”
“Why? We don’t know who killed Miss O, so what difference does it make?”
“We know now.”
“We do?”
I filled him in on the testimony I’d received this morning from Private First Class Everett P. Rothenberg. When I finished, Ernie thought about it. “You and your Korean customs. Why would that mean anything to anybody?”
“Get up,” I told him. “We have someone to talk to.”
Ernie grumbled but dressed quickly.
We wound our way through the narrow alleys of Paldang-ni. Instead of American G.I.’s and Korean business girls, the streets were now filled with children in black uniforms toting heavy backpacks on their way to school and farmers shoving carts piled high with garlic or cabbage or mounds of round Korean pears. We passed the Dragon Lady Teahouse, and just to be sure, I checked the doors, both front and back. Locked tight. Then we continued through the winding maze, heading toward the hooch of Miss Kang.
What I’d questioned Rothenberg about this morning concerned his friendship with Miss Kang. How they’d both sat up nights in the hooch waiting for Miss O. But Miss O would stay out after curfew and then not come home at four in the morning and often Rothenberg had to go to work before he knew what had happened to her. But sometimes she’d be back early with some story about how she stayed at a friend’s house and how they were having so much fun talking and playing flower cards that the time had slipped by and she hadn’t realized that midnight had come and gone and she’d been trapped until after curfew lifted at four in the morning.
“You knew it was all lies, didn’t you?” I asked.
Rothenberg allowed his head to sag. “I guess I did.”
“But Miss Kang knew for sure.”
“Yeah,” Rothenberg said. “Miss O had a lot of boyfriends. I realize that now.”
Private Everett P. Rothenberg went on to tell me that sometimes Miss O made both him and Miss Kang leave the hooch completely.
“She’d tell us that family was coming over for the weekend. And she didn’t want them to know that a G.I. like me was staying in her hooch. So Miss Kang helped out, she took me to her father’s home near Yoju. It was about a thirty-minute bus ride. When we arrived at her father’s home they were real friendly to me. I’d take off my shoes and enter the house and bow three times to her father like Miss Kang taught me. You know, on your knees and everything.”
“You took gifts?”
“Right. Miss Kang made me buy fruit. She said it’s against Korean custom to go ‘empty hands.’”
“And you prayed to her ancestors?”
“Some old photographs of a man and a woman.”
“And you went to their graves?”
“How’d you know? To the grave mounds on the side of the hill. We took rice cakes out there and offered them to the spirits. When the spirits didn’t eat them, me and Miss Kang did.” He laughed. “She always told me that food offered to the spirits has no taste. Why? Because the spirits take the flavor out of it and all you’re left with is the dough.”
“Is that true?”
“It was for me. But I never liked rice cakes to begin with.”
I stared at Rothenberg a long time. Finally, he fidgeted.
“Hey, wait a minute,” he said. “If you think there was something between me and Miss Kang, you’re wrong. Sung-hee is my girl. Miss O. I was faithful to her.”
“You were,” I said softly.
His head drooped. “Right,” he said. “I was.”
Miss Kang wasn’t in her hooch.
“She go pray,” the landlady told us.
“At the shrine at the top of the hill,” I said, pointing toward the Namhan River.
Her eyes widened. “How you know?”
I shrugged. Ernie and I thanked her, walked back through the village, and started up the narrow trail that led out of Paldang-ni, over the hills, and eventually to the banks of the Namhan River. On the way, we passed the bronze bell. It still hadn’t been moved and sat amongst a pile of rotted lumber.
At the top of the hill, we found her. She squatted on the stone platform of the shrine, just below where the bell would’ve been. Ernie walked up to her quickly, shoved her upright, pressed her against one of the wooden support beams, and frisked her. He tossed out a wallet, keys, some loose change, and finally an Army-issue bayonet.
Miss Kang squatted back down, covering her face with her hands. Narrow shoulders heaved. She was crying.
Ernie backed away, rolling his eyes, exasperated.
After she shed a few more tears, maybe she’d open up to us. I was about to whisper to Ernie to be patient when, behind me, a pebble clattered against stone. Ernie was too busy staring at the quivering form of Miss Kang to notice. As I turned, something dark exploded out of the night.
Ernie shouted.
For a moment, I was gone. Darkness, bright lights, and then more bright lights. I felt myself reeling backward and then I hit something hard and I willed my mind to clear. The darkness gave way to blurred vision. Ernie slapped me on the cheek.
“Sueño, can you stand?”
I stood up.
“Come on. He hit you with some sort of club and when I lunged at him I tripped on this stupid stone platform. He and Kang took off.”
“Who?”
“Mr. Shin.”
I followed Ernie’s pointing finger. Fuzzy vision slowly focused. The early morning haze had lifted, and more sunlight filtered through bushes and low trees. In the distance, two figures sprinted down the pathway, heading back toward Paldang-ni.
“Come on!” I shouted.
“My sentiments exactly,” Ernie said. “But watch out. She took the bayonet.”
And then we were after them.
A crowd had gathered in the central square of Paldang-ni. It was like a small park, surrounded on either side by produce vendors, fishmongers, and butcher shops. No lawn, but a few carefully tended rose bushes were ringed by small rocks. Under the shade of an ancient oak tree, old men wearing traditional white pantaloons, blue silk vests, and knitted horsehair hats squatted on their heels and smoked tobacco from long-stemmed pipes. Groups of them gathered around wooden boards playing changki, Korean chess.
Halabojis they were called. Grandfathers.
One halaboji’s horsehair hat had fallen into the dust. So had his long-stemmed pipe. Shin held him, his back pressed firmly against the trunk of the old oak. Miss Kang stood next to him, the sharp tip of her bayonet pressed against the loose flesh of the grandfather’s neck.
“Get back!” she screamed at me in English. “We’ll kill him.”
I stood with my arms to my side. Ernie paced a few cautious steps away to my left. I
knew what he was thinking. Could he pull his .45 and take a clear shot at Kang’s head before she could slice the old man’s throat? But at that distance, over ten yards, it would be risky.
“Put the knife down,” I told Miss Kang.
“Go away!” she shouted. “My brother and I will leave Paldang-ni. We’ll never come back.”
A crowd of local citizens had started to gather. Their mouths were open, shocked at what they were seeing. Elders were revered in Korea, never abused like this. Mumbled curses erupted from the crowd.
“The KNPs are on the way,” I said. “Put the knife down.”
Of course I had no idea if the KNPs had been alerted, but they would be soon. Ernie was inching farther to the left, attempting to evade Kang’s direct line of sight. I had to stall for time, before Ernie chanced a shot or Miss Kang decided that one less grandfather wouldn’t be missed one way or the other.
“You had good reason for what you did,” I told Miss Kang.
Her eyes widened. Perspiration flowed down her wrinkled forehead, forming a puddle beneath her eyes. “Yes,” she said, surprised. “That’s what I told my brother. I had good reason. Miss O made me do it.”
People were shutting down produce stands now, running to the back of the crowd to stand on tiptoes to see what was going on.
Miss Kang kept talking. “She was using him.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Miss O. She was using Everett.”
She meant Private Rothenberg. “How so?” I asked.
“She tricked him. Took his money. Never slept with him. Only had fun, changing from one boyfriend to another. Making me leave my own room. Never paying her share of the rent. So I took Everett. I was nice to him. He met my family. He prayed at our grave mounds. He liked me.”
Using her free hand, the one without the bayonet, Miss Kang wiped flowing perspiration from her eyes and stared directly at me. “He liked me. I know he did.”
“But you talked to Miss O one night. Atop the hill at the shrine with the bronze bell. You argued.”
“No!” Miss Kang shook her head vehemently. “We didn’t argue. I told Miss O about everything she did wrong. She didn’t argue. She agreed. She knew she was doing wrong. But after I told her everything and told her she should leave Everett alone, she laughed at me.”
Miss Kang stood incredulous, lost in her own story. Lost in the memory of the unbridled temerity of the arrogant Miss O Sung-hee. “She said that she would take Everett’s money and use him for as long as she wanted to and there was nothing I could do about it.”
Shin looked about frantically, knowing that as the crowd grew his chance of escape grew less. He shouted at his sister to shut up. Her head snapped back toward him.
Ernie by now had the position he wanted, on the extreme left of Shin’s peripheral vision. He reached inside his jacket and unhooked the leather shoulder holster of his .45. Miss Kang’s head was bobbing around, while the old man leaned his skull backwards, trying to avoid the sharp tip of the bayonet that pointed into his neck. Tears rolled down the halaboji’s face.
Maybe it was the sight of these tears that enraged the crowd most. Whatever it was, suddenly a barrage of garlic cloves was heaved out of the crowd. They smacked the trunk of the oak tree, barely missing Shin and the old man. Enraged, Miss Kang shouted back at them to stop. The crowd roared. This time it was a head of Napa cabbage that exploded at Kang’s feet. She hopped. Ernie pulled his .45, held it with both hands in front of him. Still no shot. I took a couple of steps forward. Miss Kang swung the tip of the bayonet my way.
That was the signal for the crowd to unleash its rage. Amidst shouts of anger, more produce flew at Shin and the grandfather and Miss Kang. Garlic, persimmons, fat pears, even a few dead mackerel.
Then the enraged citizens of Paldang-ni surged forward. Ernie raised the barrel of his .45 toward the sky, holding his fire. I tried to run at Miss Kang, but a woman bumped me, and to avoid falling on top of her, I slowed. The entire mob pushed forward, some of them brandishing sticks, some hoes, some with nothing more than their bare fists.
For a second, Miss Kang held her ground. Her eyes were wide with fright, her bayonet pointed forward. But then, like a swimmer being drowned by a tidal wave, the crowd enveloped her. Shin screamed and let go of the old man and tried to run. He didn’t get far.
Fifty people surrounded the old oak tree. Kicking, screeching, pummeling.
Ernie fired a shot into the air. No one seemed to notice. Rounding a corner at the edge of the square, a phalanx of KNPs ran across pounded earth. Wielding riot batons, swinging freely, they forced the crowd to disperse.
Only Miss Kang and Mr. Shin lay in the dust. Shin was hurt. His leg was broken — a compound fracture — and maybe an arm. I knelt next to Miss Kang Mi-ryul. Her nose was bashed in, the one she’d pointed to only yesterday. Also bashed in was her forehead and the side of her skull. Using my forefinger and thumb, I pinched the flesh above her carotid artery. The skin was still warm but the flow of blood, the force of life-giving fluid, had stopped.
Back at 8th Army I typed up my report. Private First Class Everett P. Rothenberg had already been released by the Korean National Police. Mr. Shin, the pool player, had been taken to a hospital and was recovering nicely, although he was facing hard time for the Korean legal equivalents of aggravated assault and aiding and abetting a murderess.
Miss O Sung-hee was scheduled to be buried by her family in a grave mound back in Kwangju. Miss Kang Mi-ryul, on the other hand, would be cremated. That’s all her family could afford.
What they did with her ashes, I never knew.
MARTIN LIMÓN retired from U.S. military service after 20 years in the U.S. Army, including ten years in Korea. He and his wife live in Seattle, Washington. He is the author of Jade Lady Burning and Buddha’s Money, which will be published in the Soho Crime series in 2009.
Patriotic Gestures
BY KRISTINE KATHRYN RUSCH
Pamela Kinney heard the noise in her sleep, giggles, followed by the crunching of leaves. Later, she smelled smoke, faint and acrid, and realized that her neighbors were burning garbage in their fireplace again. She got up long enough to close the window and silently curse them. She hated it when they did illegal burning.
She forgot about it until the next morning. She stepped out her back door into the crisp fall morning and found charred remains of some fabric in the middle of her driveway. There’d been no wind during the night, fortunately, or all the evidence would have been gone.
Instead, there was the pile of burned fabric and a scorch on the pavement. There were even footprints outlined in leaves.
She noted all of that with a professional’s detachment — she’d eyeballed more than a thousand crime scenes — before the fabric itself caught her attention. Then the pain was sudden and swift, right above her heart, echoing through the breastbone and down her back.
Anyone else would have thought she was having a heart attack. But she wasn’t, and she knew it. She’d had this feeling twice before, first when the officers came to her house and then when the chaplain handed her the folded flag that just a moment before had draped over her daughter’s coffin.
Pamela had clung to that flag like she’d seen so many other military mothers do, and she suspected she had looked as lost as they had. Then, when she stood, that pain ran through her, dropping her back to the chair.
Her sons took her arms, and when she mentioned the pain, they dragged her to the emergency room. She had been late for her own daughter’s wake, her chest sticky with adhesive from the cardiac machines and her hair smelling faintly of disinfectant.
And the feeling came back now, as she stared at the massacre before her. The flag, Jenny’s flag, had been ripped from the front door and burned in her driveway.
Pamela made herself breathe. Then she rubbed that spot above her left breast, felt the pain spread throughout her body, burning her eyes and forming a lump in the back of her throat. But she held the tears back. She wo
uldn’t give whoever had done this awful thing the satisfaction.
Finally she reached inside her purse for her cell, called Neil — she had trouble thinking of him as the sheriff after all the years she’d known him — and then she protected the scene until he arrived.
It only took him five minutes. Halleysburg was still a small town, no matter how many Portlanders sprawled into the community, willing to make the one and a half hour each-way daily commute to the city’s edge. Pamela had told the dispatch to make sure that Neil parked across the street so that any wind from his vehicle wouldn’t move the leaves.
And she had asked for a second scene-of-the-crime kit because she didn’t want to go inside and get hers. She didn’t want to risk losing the crime scene with a moment of inattention.
Neil pulled onto the street. His car was an unwieldy Olds with a souped-up engine and a reinforced frame. It could take a lot of punishment, and often did. As a result, the paint covering the car’s sides was fresh and clean, while the hood, roof, and trunk looked like they were covered in dirt.
The sheriff was the same. Neil Karlyn was in his late fifties, balding, with a face that had seen too much sun. But his uniform was always new, always pristine, and never wrinkled. He’d been that way since college, a precise man with precise opinions about a difficult world.
He got out of the Olds and did not reach around back for a scene-of-the-crime kit. Annoyance threaded through her.
“Where’s my kit?” she asked.
“Pam,” he said gently, “it’s a low-level property crime. It’ll never go to trial and you know it.”
“It’s arson with malicious intent,” she snapped. “That’s a felony.”
He sighed and studied her for a moment. He clearly recognized her tone. She’d used it often enough on him when they were students at the University of Oregon and when they were lovers on different sides of the political fence, constantly on the verge of splitting up.