by Martin Limon
“Chief of Smoke,” I said.
He looked up and squinted, a crooked-toothed weasel who hadn’t shaved in a couple of days. “Who are you?”
I showed him my identification. “George Sueño, Criminal Investigation Division. This is my partner, Ernie Bascom.”
He looked at the badge and turned back to his gear. “Why ain’t you wearing a coat and tie?” he asked. “I thought you guys always wore a coat and tie.”
“Not undercover,” Ernie said.
The Chief of Smoke ignored us and continued to rummage through his things, sticking his hand way down into the depths of his dirty green canvas pack.
“Here’s the son of a bitch,” he said. “Kim! Kim! I found it.”
His Korean Army driver came running out of the Orderly Room as the Chief of Smoke wrenched his hand free from the enveloping material. He held up a dirty, unwrapped white bread sandwich and they both beamed. He tore it and handed half to the Korean. They munched contentedly and the driver, smiling, returned to the Orderly Room.
“Kimchi and bologna,” the Chief of Smoke said. “Made it myself.” His mouth was open. The odor of the hot pickled cabbage flushed the diesel fumes from my sinuses. He didn’t offer us any.
“The last field problem you were on,” I said, “you were at Nightmare Range.”
The Chief looked at me, still chewing with his mouth open, but didn’t say anything.
“There was a problem,” I said. “Somebody from your unit went a little too far with one of the girls outside the wire.”
He closed one eye completely. “What do you mean, ‘too far’?”
“He killed her.”
The Chief of Smoke chomped viciously on his sandwich. Cabbage crunched. “Probably deserved it.” He continued to chew, turning his head to squint at the brilliantly outlined hills in the blue-sky distance. “I know my first wife did.”
“Did you notice anything unusual that trip? Anything that might have …”
“Had to be Bogard. Only one mean enough to do it. And he was always messing with those girls out in the field. Didn’t pay ’em, I don’t think. Never had enough money anyway what with all the trouble he’s been in.”
“Trouble?”
“Yeah. Article Fifteens for not making formations, over-purchasing on his ration card, shit like that.”
“Where’s he at now?”
“Don’t know.”
“He’s not in your unit anymore?”
“Well, we’re still carrying him on the books. They say he’s down in the ville.” The Chief of Smoke swallowed the last of his rancid sandwich, turned away from the hills, and looked at me. Bread and bologna still stuck to his teeth. “He’s been AWOL ever since we came back from Nightmare Range.”
She propped her half-naked breasts atop my belt and rubbed her nipples against my stomach. She wore only shorts and a halter top, and her straight black hair swung back as she looked up at me and smiled through a mask of makeup.
“Where you stationed?” she asked.
“Starlight Club,” I said.
She pulled back and punched me in the stomach with her small fist. “You not stationed Starlight Club. I stationed Starlight Club.” She turned to Ernie. “You buy me drink?”
He pulled his beer back a few inches from his mouth and looked at her as if she were out of her mind. She left.
We were leaning against the bar of the Starlight Club and this was the fifth joint we’d been in. The place was packed with GIs, mostly playing pool, and Korean girls, scantily dressed in outfits designed to inflame the male hormonal system. Some of them gyrated their bodies on the small dance floor, moving to the beat of the overpowering rock music. Various colored lights flashed on and off around the club, stabilized by the steady glare of the fluorescent bulbs above the pool tables.
“Tits and ass,” Ernie said.
“Yeah. It’s not easy being a hunter.”
A group of GIs walked in and one girl shuffled and squealed across the room, throwing herself into the arms of a young man with a wispy mustache and blond hair parted in the middle of his head.
The tallest member of the group stood aside and surveyed the club from the doorway. He was exceedingly thin but energy seemed to emanate from his body. Even though he stood still, some part of his anatomy seemed always to be quivering and about to explode into movement.
His name was Duckworth. The Chief of Smoke had pointed him out to us as he sped by in his deuce-and-a-half, the first driver to finish his chores at the wash point and make it to the motor pool. “They’re all into whacko weed. He’ll know where Bogard is.”
Duckworth and his buddies entered the club, mingled with some of the pool players, and soon he was leaning against the jukebox, sparring and flirting with one of the girls. His buddy was still enveloped by a feminine bear hug and had to hold his elbows high to tilt back his beer. The group was in constant motion, all with seemingly little adult motive, like children frolicking on a nursery room floor.
Ernie took a sip of his beer. “Shouldn’t we roust him out back?”
“I don’t think there’s any need. As ornery as the Chief of Smoke said Bogard is, these guys probably will be glad to be rid of him.”
We ordered two more beers. One of the girls walked up, and this time Ernie grabbed her. We weren’t in any hurry.
Duckworth and his buddies around the jukebox yelled into one another’s ears. The wall of music between us stopped any sound from getting through. They took some of the girls with them and walked past the men’s latrine and out the back door.
We gulped down our beers, not even giving the suds time to settle in our stomachs. Ernie let go of his sweet and rotund young girl and followed me out the back door.
The group stood in the mud in the dark and narrow alley. They didn’t move when the light from the club followed us outside, just stared at us with hugely dilated cat’s eyes. A joint came toward me and I reached out my hand. The GI hesitated and looked at Duckworth. When he nodded, the small, burning ember was passed to me.
I took a hit and handed it to Ernie. I held the smoke in my lungs while I spoke. “I’m look for Bogard.”
Everybody laughed.
“Usually,” Duckworth said, “people are trying to get away from him.”
“Why?”
Duckworth shrugged. “He’s mean, he’s broke, and he doesn’t take no for an answer—on anything.”
The GIs and the girls sniffled and snorted in their efforts not to lose any of the precious herbal fumes.
“Where can I find him?”
“If you got money, he’ll find you.”
I waited.
Duckworth broke the silence. “Find the River Rat and you’ll find Bogard.”
“The River Rat?”
“Yeah. He lives with her. Sort of.”
“Sort of?”
“She catches a lot of GIs,” Duckworth said, “but usually just before curfew, when he needs a bunk, Bogard goes over to her hooch. If there’s somebody there, he’s just shit out of luck. Bogard tosses him out into the street.”
The GIs giggled and snorted some more.
“How do I find the River Rat?”
“She lives by the river,” someone said. The rush of air through nostrils increased.
“She walks the streets,” Duckworth said. “And since there’s only one street in the village, you can’t miss her.”
She blocked the way.
A GI stopped and listened to her for a moment and then shook his head. He stepped around her, but she grabbed him by the arm and seemed to be pleading with him. Keeping his hands in his pockets, he roughly pulled his elbow from her grip and continued past.
She smiled and waved her hand a little, as if saying goodbye to an old friend.
It was getting colder. Scattered flakes of snow hit the oil-splattered blacktop and vanished as if they’d never existed. GIs and half-dressed Korean girls scurried from club to club, running away from the small, blustering snow clouds that
chased them like restless apparitions.
As she walked toward us, I turned to Ernie. “She’s got to be the River Rat.”
Her small breasts only slightly pushed out the thick, gray material of her baggy sweatshirt. She wore a pair of bedroom slippers and loose-fitting, dirty-yellow pants that were short enough to reveal her tall brown socks. Her face was plain but pleasant and seemed removed from the mundane consideration of life by the half smile that controlled it. Her unwashed black hair dripped to her shoulders.
She talked quietly to herself and looked around, not at other people but at objects on the ground and on the walls and in the windows of the small shops that lined the street. She seemed delighted by her conversation and occasionally nodded or waved with an easy twist of the wrist. A fine lady gently accentuating some important point.
She appeared happier than the people trying to avoid her. If she’d actually had a companion, looked at some of the people staring at her, or made some effort to clean herself and make herself presentable, I might not have thought she was mad.
When she got close, I spoke. “Anyonghaseiyo.”
She seemed surprised by the interruption. But the small smile quickly regained control of her face and she turned and pointed with her thumb back down the street. “You go?”
I gestured with my head toward Ernie. “We go.”
She looked at both of us and smiled. “No sweat,” she said. We followed her down the street.
About fifty yards past the Starlight Club, she turned off the main road and wound through some mud-floored alleys that got progressively narrower and darker. The stench from the river got harder to take as we went downhill. Finally, she stopped and crouched through a gate in a fence made of rotted wood. The shore of the river lapped listlessly up to within a few feet of the entranceway.
We followed her in. She kicked off her slippers, stepped up on the wooden porch, and slid back the panel leading to her room. She motioned for us to follow.
“Just a minute,” I said. “We wait.”
I sat down on the porch facing the entranceway. Ernie found a wooden stool and pulled it over behind the gate so anyone entering wouldn’t be able to see him. He reached into the pocket of his jacket, pulled out two cans of Falstaff, and tossed one across the courtyard to me. I caught it with two hands, popped the cap, and sucked on the frothing hops.
The River Rat didn’t question us but squatted on her haunches and waited. Just like I’d told her to do.
Ernie settled down on the stool, sipped on his beer, and checked under his jacket. His face calmed as he touched the shoulder holster that held the .45.
The wind gained strength and elbowed its way noisily through the cracks in the old wooden fence. The snow came down with more purpose now and began to stick on the mud, making for a slippery and clammy quagmire.
Just before midnight, I spotted a shadow lumbering along the edge of the river. At the gate, the shadow bent over and filled the entranceway completely for a moment and then popped into the compound.
At first I wasn’t sure if he was human. He looked more like a moving mountain of green canvas. A small fatigue baseball cap balanced atop his big, round head, and two flaming eyes shone out from within glistening folds of black skin. His shoulders were huge and broad enough to be used as workbenches. The arms tapered slightly, like drainage pipes, and as he walked, they worked their way methodically around the gargantuan girth of his torso. The two large sections that were his legs moved alternately toward me.
My throat was suddenly dry. I held my breath and didn’t move. When he got up close, he hovered for a moment, like a storm blotting out the sky, and turned and sat down next to me on the small wooden porch. It shuddered, groaned, and then held. He tilted his red eyes heavenward and took a drink from a small, crystalline bottle that seemed lost in his huge black mitt of a hand. He swallowed, grimaced, and then grinned, first at me and then at Ernie. His teeth were square blocks of yellow chalk, evenly spaced along purple gums.
He growled from deep in his throat. Laughter. And he was quivering with it. “Been waiting for you guys.”
He leaned forward and reached out the bottle to me. Soju. I took it, rubbed the lip with the flat palm of my hand, and drank. I got up and handed it to Ernie. Ernie drank tentatively at first, and then tilted the bottle up quickly and took an audible gulp. He returned the bottle to Bogard, and walked back and leaned against the fence.
The River Rat bounced back and forth to the kitchen, running around as if she were going to prepare some snacks to go with our rice liquor. She mumbled to herself and flitted about, touching Bogard lightly on his back.
He reached out with one huge paw, grabbed her by the shoulder, and sat her down on the porch next to him. She got quiet and stared serenely at us like a schoolgirl waiting for the presentation to begin.
Bogard’s eyes were viciously bloodshot.
“Tell us about Nightmare Range,” I said.
Bogard grunted a half laugh and looked at the ground.
“It was a mistake,” he said. “She shouldn’t have struggled like that.” He looked up at me. “They always want to check you out, you know? Check to see if you got any shit. But by the time she got me checked out, there was no turning back.”
“The clap?”
“No. Chancroid.” It was one of the more popular venereal diseases. “They wouldn’t let me come out of the field to take care of it. Just a little hole in my pecker, nothing serious. She shouldn’t have looked. Then we wouldn’t have this problem.”
“We don’t have a problem,” Ernie said.
Bogard looked up and grinned. “You will.”
I spoke too quickly, trying to pretend that I didn’t understand the threat implied in his answer. “So what happened? You held her down?”
“I hit her first. But the little bitch kept struggling.” He pouted and looked at his fleshy underarm. “She bit me. So I held her.”
“By the throat?”
“Yeah. And when I finished, she wasn’t moving anymore. There was nothing I could do for her.”
The River Rat got up and started to flutter around in little circles, like a wounded bird with one good leg. She mumbled some more and made squeaking noises.
Bogard spoke to her tenderly. “Shut the fuck up.”
She shut up.
“Finish your soju,” I said. “Then you’re coming with us.”
Bogard let out a chortling laugh that seemed to cause his shoulders to bounce. He raised the half-empty soju bottle to his mouth and took huge, breathless gulps. The level of the clear, fiery liquid fell straight down into his gullet.
He burped and handed the empty bottle to the River Rat. She took it as if it were a great gift and carried it with two hands to deposit it in a safe place.
“I ain’t going,” Bogard said.
Ernie stood away from the fence and jammed his hands further into the pockets of his jacket.
“Think for a minute, Bogard,” I said. “You’ve got no place to go. You can’t leave the country. You have no income, except for dealing a little drugs or whatever. You can’t stay here and you can’t get away.” He just looked at me, amused. “The last GI convicted of murder here in Korea got four years.” I waited for that to sink in. “After he finished the time they sent him back to the States. No sense making it harder on yourself. Come with me, and we’ll get this shit over with.”
The River Rat came back into the courtyard, stopped, and stood stock still for a moment. She started flitting back and forth again, humming and talking to herself, walking amongst us on imaginary errands, a gracious hostess serving her guests.
Bogard bared his block-like teeth. “I ain’t going,” he said. “And it’s going to take more than you two guys to bring me in.”
Ernie took his hands out of his pockets and stepped away from the wall. I reached behind my back and pulled out my handcuffs. Bogard stood up, his feet shoulder-width apart, still smiling, and put his drainage pipe arms out slightly as if he wer
e ready to embrace us.
I took a step toward him. He crouched, and I stopped. He would pulverize me. And once I got in close, Ernie would be unable to use the .45.
Ernie pulled the big pistol out of his shoulder holster, slid back the charging handle, and shot Bogard in the leg. The River Rat screamed. Bogard doubled over, grabbed his leg, and bellowed like a wounded bear. I moved forward and snapped one of the cuffs around his huge wrist. When he realized what I was doing, he let go of his leg and swung an enormous paw at me. I went down. The River Rat jumped on Ernie; screaming and clawing at his face like a wildcat tearing the bark off a tree.
Bogard hopped on his good leg toward Ernie, his enormous girth rising and falling thunderously with each hop. I jumped up, ran at him, and rammed my shoulder into the green expanse of his side.
The foot of his wounded leg hit the ground, he screamed, and we all slammed to the ground in a huge pile. Things crunched. I rolled to my side, groped for the cuffs, and managed to get both of Bogard’s hands shackled before he could recover from the pain.
Ernie hopped up and held the gun on him. Bogard rolled on the ground, his big, square teeth clenched in pain. The River Rat didn’t move.
I checked her out. Her breathing was shallow. I left Ernie in the hooch and walked carefully along the lace covering of newly fallen snow to the main road. I trotted a few clubs down to an MP jeep and had them radio for an ambulance. They followed me to the mouth of the alley so they could guide the medics to the hooch.
When I returned, a few of the neighbors stood around outside talking amongst themselves. Ernie sat on the porch, hunched over, holding the .45 loosely in his hands. Bogard was still on the ground but sitting up now, slowly trying to shake the fresh snowflakes off his massive head. He clutched the upper part of his thigh, but a puddle of blood continued to grow beneath him. The River Rat hadn’t moved.
The medics brought a stretcher. Cursing and howling, Bogard managed to roll up onto it. It took four of us to carry him out of the hooch, down the alley, and then hoist him up into the ambulance. One medic stayed in the back with him, the other was about to climb into the cab.