The Line

by Martin Limon

  “You got in?”

  “Yes. They told me I had to.”

  “Did they take you somewhere?”

  “No, we just sat there. The woman took my hand and told me she was sorry about my brother and Teddy.”

  “She called him that? Teddy?”

  “No. She called him my boyfriend.”

  “What did this woman look like?”

  Her red-rimmed eyes widened. “Beautiful. Dressed very well, like a fashion model.”

  “How old would you guess she was?”

  “Young. Not older than thirty.”

  “Tell us everything she said.”

  “She mentioned your name, Sueño. She told me to call you, but not to say anything about her over the phone. Just to meet you somewhere and pass along a message.” We waited. Marilyn swallowed. “I’m not sure I’m supposed to tell him,” she said, nodding toward Ernie. Without being asked, Ernie rose from the table and walked outside, standing in front of the plate-glass window, arms crossed as he surveyed the street scene.

  “Go ahead,” I told her.

  “She said that her, what do you call it? Group of people.”

  “Organization?”

  “Yes. Organization. Her organization wants to trade. Not with you, but with a man you know. You must set up the meeting with him tonight, at nine p.m. You must come alone with him, no police.”

  “Who is this man?”

  “She said you’d figure it out.”

  I frowned. Who would a couple of lowly GIs know who had anything worth trading? Marilyn went on to say that the meeting was to be held in the outskirts of a city called Kumchon at a kisaeng house known as Chunhyang Lin. Kumchon was on the way to the DMZ, a mile or two before you hit Freedom Bridge.

  “Tonight,” I repeated, “at nine p.m?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not sure that’s enough time to set this up. Did she give you a way for us to contact her if something goes wrong?”

  Marilyn shook her head. “No.” She switched to Korean. “She says no second chances. That if you don’t bring the man her bosses want, the woman you’re looking for will die.”

  We arrived back at the CID office an hour later to find Corrine Fitch inside, waiting impatiently for us. She looked upset after the day’s hearing. She took a big breath, let it out slowly, and looked around the office. She glanced at Miss Kim, who sat with her head bowed in front of her typewriter, and then at the three of us clustered nervously around Riley’s desk.

  “This is your investigative nerve center?” she asked.

  For the first time in my life, I felt self-conscious about the gray army-issue desks, the dented metal file cabinets, and the splintered wooden field tables. She spotted the silver coffee urn in back. She smirked, appearing to enjoy my discomfort. Then she said, “Can a girl get a cup of coffee?”

  I grabbed a metal chair near the back counter, unfolded it, and invited her to take a seat. After I pulled her a cup of coffee and she fiddled around with the low-cal sweetener and powdered creamer, she sat down, seeming somewhat calmer.

  “How can we help you?” I asked.

  “The hearing isn’t boding well for us. I suspect we’ll be forced into a court-martial in a few days,” she said with a grim expression. “The only concrete proof we have in my client’s favor is your second entrenching tool. Have you found anything new?”

  I sat down opposite her and explained that we were still officially barred from the case and had been tasked with an important missing person investigation, but promised we would do whatever we could to help Private First Class Theodore Fusterman.

  She sat silent, sipping on the lukewarm coffee. She grimaced at its bitterness and asked for another packet of the soluble creamer. I handed it to her and, daintily, she ripped it to shreds. As the white powder fell into blackness, I said, “Where is Colonel Brunmeyer?”

  Her eyes widened. “Why?” she said. “What’s he got to do with anything?”

  “Private Fusterman was one of his men. And we didn’t get to speak to him much before being pulled off the case.”

  She stared at me suspiciously. “Seems to me that all you’re doing by questioning him,” she said, “is taking a shot in the dark.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “It’s important that I speak to him. Do you know his whereabouts?”

  She set her coffee down, thinking it over, then checked her wristwatch. I noticed the slenderness of her forearm and how smooth her skin looked. Ernie studied me, seemingly reading my thoughts as the side of his mouth curved into a half-grin.

  “He told me he was heading back to the JSA,” she said, “but he had to run a few errands first.”

  “Like what?” Ernie asked.

  “Hold on, I’m trying to remember.” After a brief pause, she said, “He told me he was going to stop at the—what do you call it?” She snapped her fingers. “The office where purchasing quotas are issued.”

  “Ration Control,” I ventured.

  “Yes. The Ration Control Office. Then he had to pick up a few things at the PX and the supermarket.”

  “The commissary,” I corrected.

  “Right. The commissary. Why do you have such odd names for everything?”

  “Guess what we call the liquor store,” Ernie said.

  “What?”

  “The Class Six.”

  She waved her hand. “I don’t even want to know.”

  “Where else was he going?” I prompted.

  “That was it.” She thought for a moment. “No, there was one more place. He said he had to see Mac.”

  “Who?” Ernie asked.

  “Mac. Not sure who that is.”

  “MAC,” I said. “The Military Armistice Commission.”

  “Ah, okay. There’s a colonel or someone he has to see there.”

  “Colonel Peele,” I said.

  “That’s the one.” She raised an eyebrow at me. “So why are you so interested in Rudy’s schedule?”

  “Who?”

  “Rudy. Colonel Brunmeyer.”

  “I’m sure he’ll want to do everything he can to help one of the men under his command,” I told her.

  We convinced Corrine Fitch to return to the Cosmos Hotel. She made me promise to keep her posted on any developments and to call her as soon as I knew something. “We don’t have much time, and I have to make a long-distance call to his parents,” she said. “I’m not looking forward to it.”

  “Blame it on us,” I told her.

  “You’re damn right I will.”

  As I escorted her to the door, Miss Kim looked up from her typewriter, eyes wide; absolutely flabbergasted at Corrine Fitch’s temerity. From a Caucasian woman, I believe Miss Kim would’ve accepted it—been shocked by it, but accepted it. But from a woman who was ethnically Korean, she was flabbergasted.

  Ernie and I watched Corrine parade down the hallway in her tight skirt, and we both heaved a sigh of relief as she pushed through the exit door.

  “A handful,” Ernie said.

  “Brunmeyer’s covering his tracks,” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Corrine Fitch, Porter over at Ration Control, and Colonel Peele at the Military Armistice Commission. He’s making sure they’re all on his team.”

  “On his team for what?”

  I didn’t answer. “Let me make a call.”

  Using Riley’s phone, I called Specialist Porter at the Data Processing Unit.

  After he picked up, he said immediately, “Don’t worry, Sueño, I got it. I’m going along with the badminton rotation from now on.”

  “That’s not what I’m calling about.”

  “Then what?”

  “Did Lieutenant Colonel Brunmeyer from the JSA stop by your office this morning?”

  “Did he. Wit
h a whole slew of new LOAs.”

  “Have you processed them yet?”

  “Sure. He’s a battalion commander. They go right through.”

  “What’s he buying?”

  “The usual. Liquor, cigarettes, cases of canned meat, instant coffee. Stuff like that.”

  “Consumables,” I said.

  “Right. To while away the long guard duty hours up on Freedom’s Frontier.”

  “It’s unusual for a battalion commander to turn them in himself, isn’t it?”

  “Very. He actually brought them in last time, too, though.”

  “The time he punched you.”

  Porter paused. “Right,” he said finally. “But before that, some JSA dog-face used to be his messenger.”

  “I need a name.”

  “Hold on, let me check the paperwork.”

  Two minutes later he came back on the line. “Somebody named Fusterman. A PFC.”

  I hung up. After briefing Ernie on what I’d found, he said, “So what? It figures that the guy at the bottom of the totem pole would make the runs to Seoul, since the commander wouldn’t mind releasing him.”

  “But Corporal Noh went with him,” I said, “which gave them both a chance to stop at his parents’ house.”

  “Briefly. They still had to make it back to the JSA by close of business.”

  Ernie and I had made plenty of personal stops while running one official errand or another. It wasn’t authorized, but it was common practice. As long as something didn’t go wrong, like totaling your military vehicle in an unauthorized area or getting drunk and failing to return to compound on time, no one noticed.

  “What’s this have to do with the cost of stereo sets in China?” Ernie asked.

  “You mean tea,” I said.

  “Okay, tea.”

  “I’m not sure yet,” I said, “but Brunmeyer is also chatting up Colonel Peele at the MAC and Corrine Fitch, Fusterman’s defense attorney. Everything is going fine for him.”

  “What do you mean, ‘going fine’? Noh’s murder was a huge embarrassment to Colonel Brunmeyer.”

  “Not enough to stop his promotion,” I said.

  “According to Strange.”

  “Have you known Strange to be wrong about these things?”

  “Guess not. But what of it? I don’t know where you’re going with this.”

  “If a criminal organization wanted to talk to the battalion commander of the Joint Security Area, if they wanted something from him, how would they get it?”

  Ernie’s eyes glazed over. “I don’t know.”

  “They could kidnap a female dependent,” I said, “and coerce you and me into bringing the good colonel to them.”

  “Okay.”

  “And once they talked to him, they’d tell him what they wanted him to do.”

  “To do? Like what?”

  “Set that aside for now.”

  “Why? Because you don’t know?”

  “I haven’t got a clue. But there’s one thing we do know now. We know who we’re supposed to bring to that meeting tonight.”

  “How do we know that?”

  “Because they contacted the victim’s sister. And they know we can’t bring Fusterman, because he’s locked up. So it must be somebody else involved with her brother.”

  “His commanding officer,” Ernie said. “Who else?”

  Frantically, we searched the PX, the commissary, and even the MAC headquarters, but Lieutenant Colonel Brunmeyer had already come and gone.

  Or as Corrine Fitch called him, Rudy.

  -24-

  Ernie and I sped north toward the city of Kumchon.

  “We could call him,” Ernie said.

  “Yeah. But the military phone lines from Seoul take forever. And sometimes they’re down. Better if we call from Camp Giant.”

  We knew from a previous case that the central phone exchange for the 2nd Infantry Division area north of Seoul was located at Camp Giant. About ten miles north of the Seoul city limits, we were stopped by armed MPs at the 2nd Infantry Division checkpoint. We flashed our CID badges and our emergency dispatch for the jeep and they waved us through. A few miles farther on, at the phone exchange on Camp Giant, the Korean civilian on duty connected us directly to the JSA. The Duty NCO answered the phone. I explained to him who we were and told him that I needed to talk to Lieutenant Colonel Rudolph Brunmeyer.

  “He’s not here,” the guy told us.

  “What do you mean he’s not there?” I asked. “He was in Seoul earlier today and he told the MAC commander he was heading back to the JSA.”

  “Well, he never made it.”

  “When do you expect him in?”

  “Probably tomorrow before morning formation. Never known him to be gone more than one day at a time.”

  I gave the Duty NCO my name and told him I’d call back later if I couldn’t locate Colonel Brunmeyer. And if he showed up, to have him sit tight.

  “Why?”

  “It’s an emergency. I’ll explain it to him.”

  I hung up. I hadn’t given the Staff Duty NCO a return number, since the only phone numbers I could be reached at were either the CID office, which would be closed soon, or the Charge of Quarters desk in the barracks, which wouldn’t do us any good. We had to find Brunmeyer and convince him to go to the Chunhyang Lin kisaeng house before twenty-one-hundred hours, nine p.m. But how?

  “So where’d he go?” I asked Ernie.

  Ernie smirked. “Where would you go?”

  For a moment, I didn’t understand what he was getting at. Then it dawned on me. I reached for my wallet and pulled out a card I’d saved. First, I had to get through to the civilian phone exchange, where I gave the operator the number to the Cosmos Hotel. When it started to ring, I thrust the phone at Ernie.

  “You talk,” I said.

  I didn’t want to hear her voice, not if she was with him. Ernie snickered at my discomfort but took the phone.

  Chunhyang Lin literally translates to Spring Fragrance Forest, or more eloquently, the Forest of the Fragrance of Spring. Most kisaeng houses had fancy names like this, written in Chinese characters and glowing from a neon sign hanging over the front gate, which would be barred metal or wooden gates made of thick lumber. Exclusivity was part of their appeal; kisaeng houses were reserved for the elite. Which was true, if you defined “elite” as anybody with enough cash to pay the fare.

  It wasn’t hard to find. In downtown Kumchon, which stretched about two blocks, I asked one of the idle kimchi cabdrivers for directions. He pointed and said, “Ddok parro.” Straight ahead. About a quarter mile out of town, we saw the sign.

  We didn’t see any point in being devious, so Ernie drove directly into the gravel-covered parking lot out front. He backed into a space on the edge of the elevated area, which dropped off into a half-frozen rice paddy.

  “What now?” he asked, turning off the engine.

  “We hope like hell Brunmeyer shows up.” I checked my watch. Eight-thirty p.m.

  “And if he doesn’t?” Ernie asked.

  “We have to try to negotiate with them ourselves.”

  Ernie patted the .45 in a shoulder holster beneath his jacket. “I’ll negotiate with them all right.”

  About the last thing we wanted to do was start shooting if we wanted Evelyn Cresthill to have any chance of surviving. Ernie knew that, but it made him feel better to talk big. He’d been hanging around Riley too much.

  Back at Camp Giant, he had spoken on the phone to Corrine Fitch, who’d admitted that Lieutenant Colonel Brunmeyer was with her in the hotel room before handing him the phone. Ernie explained the life-or-death nature of this meeting and assured Brunmeyer that we would be there, armed, to ensure his safety. Maybe because Corrine was sitting beside him, listening, Brunmeyer responded gruffly that he could
take care of his own safety. Ernie repeated the stakes of the meeting to drive home its importance.

  “These gangs don’t mess around. If you don’t show, they’re going to murder an innocent Army wife.”

  “I got it,” Brunmeyer responded.

  “Okay.”

  Ernie laid out the precise location of the city of Kumchon, about halfway between the first 2nd Division checkpoint and the Freedom Bridge, which crossed the Imjin River leading to the Demilitarized Zone. “At the turnoff on the Main Supply Route, there’s a big sign pointing toward Kumchon,” Ernie said, “in English and Korean. You can’t miss it.”

  Brunmeyer said he’d seen the sign before and promised he’d be at the Chunhyang Lin kisaeng house before twenty-one-hundred hours.

  Ernie hung up, but not before I’d heard Corrine Fitch’s voice in the background, emanating from the receiver. It didn’t make me feel great, but I reminded myself that I had no claim on her. Just a stupid adolescent crush.

  The night grew colder, and sitting in the parked jeep as we waited was becoming uncomfortable. Ernie pulled his collar up and glanced at the road.

  “The sign for the kisaeng house isn’t in English,” Ernie said. “Do you think he’ll be able to find it?”

  “He’ll be coming down this road,” I said. It was the only thoroughfare heading west out of Kumchon. “If we see a jeep coming, we’ll flash our lights.”

  Ernie started the engine and moved to a spot more visible from the road. There were a few Korean-made sedans in the parking lot, but we were the only jeep. After Ernie turned off the engine we listened to the sounds of the night. No crickets—it was too cold. Just a lonely breeze whistling across muddy rice paddies.

  “What kind of a spot is this for a kisaeng house?” Ernie asked.

  “Removed from Seoul,” I said, “so wives are less likely to find their businessmen husbands. And the rent’s low, which means a smaller bar tab.”

  “And the Kumchon police are pliable, easy to pay off.”

  I shrugged. “Like the KNPs in Seoul, but cheaper.”

  “Lower cost of living,” Ernie said.

  We often relied on the Korean National Police, from things like forensic support to Mr. Kill’s backup on our investigations. But we knew that corruption was rampant among rank-and-file KNPs. At least, what we would call corruption in the States. In Korea, it was seen more as simply making a living.