Nightmare Range

by Martin Limon

  “Four. Three MPs per jeep.”

  “Three?”

  The desk sergeant shrugged. “We’d have four per jeep if we could. The advance party of the Kitty Hawk’s arriving tonight.”

  “All patrols roving?”

  “No. One in the center of the strip, two more on either end, and one patrol roving.”

  “You must put your studs in the center.”

  “You got that right.”

  “Who performs your liaison with the Shore Patrol?”

  The desk sergeant shrugged again. “The lieutenant here, such as it is. Mainly they run their own show, out of the port officer’s headquarters down by the docks.”

  “Thanks. If we find out anything—and there’s time—we’ll let your MPs make the arrest.”

  “Don’t do us any favors. Those squids can kill each other for all I care.”

  The lieutenant shot him a look. The desk sergeant glanced at the lieutenant and then back down at the comic book on his desk.

  We turned to walk out. Ernie winked at the lieutenant, who glared after us until we faded into the thickening fog of the Pusan night.

  Texas Street was long and bursting with music and brightly flashing neon. The colors and the songs changed as we walked down the street, and the scantily clad girls waved at us through beaded curtains, trying to draw us in. Young American sailors in blue jeans and nylon jackets with embroidered dragons on the back bounced from bar to bar enjoying the embraces of the “business girls,” who still outnumbered them. The main force of their shipmates had not arrived yet, and the Kitty Hawk would not dock until dawn. But Texas Street was ready for them.

  We saw the MPs. The jeep in the center of Texas Street was parked unobtrusively next to a brick wall, its radio crackling. The three MPs smoked and talked, big brutes all. We stayed away from them and concentrated on blending into the crowd.

  Ernie was having no trouble at all. In bar after bar we toyed with the girls, bought drinks only for ourselves, and kept from answering their questions about which ship we were on by constantly changing the subject.

  One of the girls caught on that we were in the army by our unwillingness to spend too much money and by the few Korean words that we let slip out.

  “Don’t let the mama-san hear you speaking Korean,” she said. “If she does, she will know that you’re in the army, and she will not let me talk to you.”

  “What’s wrong with GIs?”

  I could answer that question with volumes, but I wanted to hear her version.

  “All GI Cheap Charlie. Sailors are here for only a short time. They spend a lot of money.”

  We filed the economics lesson, finished our beers, and staggered to the next bar.

  Periodically we hung around near one of the MP patrols, within earshot of their radio, waiting for a report of a fight or a mugging. So far it was a quiet night.

  Later, a group of white uniformed sailors on Shore Patrol duty ran past us, holding onto their revolvers and their hats, their nightsticks flapping at their sides. We followed, watched while they broke up a fight in one of the bars. A gray navy van pulled up, and the disheveled revelers were loaded aboard.

  We found a noodle stand and ate, giving ourselves away as GIs to the wizened old proprietor by knowing what to order. Ernie sipped on the hot broth and then took a swig of a cold bottle of Oriental beer.

  “Quiet night.”

  “No revelations yet.”

  “Maybe tomorrow, when the entire flotilla arrives.”

  “Flotilla. Sounds like the damn Spanish Armada.”

  “Yeah. Except a lot more powerful.”

  Just before the midnight curfew the Shore Patrol got busy again chasing the sailors back to the ship or off the streets.

  We had taken a cab all the way back to Hialeah Compound before we heard about the mugging.

  “One sailor,” the desk sergeant said. “Beat up pretty bad. The navy medical personnel are taking care of him now.”

  “Any witnesses?”

  “None. Happened right before curfew. Apparently he was trying to make it back to the ship.”

  In the morning, before our eggs and coffee, we found out that the sailor was dead.

  The buildings that housed the port officer’s headquarters were metal Quonset huts differentiated from the Army Corps of Engineers’ Quonset huts only by the fact that they were painted battleship gray while the army’s buildings were painted olive drab. Slightly less colorful than Texas Street.

  The brass buttons on the old chief’s coat bulged under the expanding pressure of his belly. We showed our identification.

  “Who was the sailor who got killed in the mugging last night?”

  The chief shuffled through some paperwork. “Petty Officer Third Class Lockworth, Gerald R.”

  “What ship was he on?”

  “The USS Swann. One of the tenders for the Kitty Hawk. They say he was carrying a couple months’ pay.”

  “Nothing left on him?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe the girls got to it first.”

  “Maybe. But I doubt it. He was three-year veteran of the Pacific Fleet.”

  “What was the cause of death?”

  “Massive hemorrhage of the brain.”

  “Have you got your eyes on any particular group of sailors that might be preying on their shipmates?”

  “Not really. The brass tends to think that it’s some Korean gangs working the streets. Maybe they’ve developed a taste for the Seventh Fleet payroll. That would explain why there haven’t been any arrests made.”

  “The police here want to protect the sailors. There’s a lot of pressure from the ROK Government to make the US Navy feel welcome.”

  “Maybe. But at a lower level, policies have a habit of being changed.”

  “Do you buy all that, Chief?”

  “Could be. I keep an open mind. But in general I tend to go with the scuttlebutt.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That it’s some of your local GIs that got a taste for the Seventh Fleet payroll.”

  “If the average sailor starts to believe either one of those viewpoints, it could cause a lot of trouble down here on Texas Street.”

  “Yeah. I wouldn’t want to be a dogface on liberty in this town tonight.”

  “Thanks for the encouragement.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  The Kitty Hawk finally pulled in at noon, and standing by the dock were the mayor and the provincial governor and the US Navy’s 7th Fleet band. The sailors lined the deck of the huge gloating edifice, their bell-bottoms and kerchiefs flapping in the breeze. The ship’s captain and his staff, in their dazzling white uniforms, bounced down the gangplank to the tune of “Anchors Aweigh,” and were greeted by a row of beautiful young Korean maidens in traditional dresses who placed leis over their necks and bowed to them in greeting.

  The governor made a speech of welcome and the captain answered with a long rambling dissertation on the awesome firepower of the Kitty Hawk. Greater, he said, than the entire defense establishments of some countries.

  “I thought he wasn’t supposed to confirm or deny that they have nuclear capability,” I said.

  Ernie smirked. “He’s also not supposed to confirm or deny that he’s a jerk.”

  After the tedious ceremony was over, the sailors—free at last—poured like a great white sea into the crevices and alleys of Texas Street.

  The night was mad. The Shore Patrol ran back and forth, unable to keep up with all the explosions being ignited by the half-crazed sailors. Even the MPs had to keep on the move. They were tense. Alert.

  I saw different faces in the jeeps tonight and asked one of the MPs about it.

  “We’re on twenty-four hour alert while the Kitty Hawk is here, but we have to get some rest sometime.”

  “Twelve-hour shifts?”

  “Or more, if needed.”

  Ernie and I wandered away from the bright lights, checking the outskirts of the bar distri
ct. Like all beasts of prey, the muggers would look for stragglers, strays who’d wandered from the main herd.

  It was mostly residential area back there, high walls of brick or stone and securely boarded gates.

  There were a few bars, however, and a few neighborhood eateries. Some sailors were wandering around, those who wanted to get away from the hubbub.

  A couple of big Americans about a block in front of us turned a corner. They looked familiar to me somehow. We trotted after them, but by the time we got to the dimly lit intersection they were gone.

  “Who was it?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  We walked into a bar closer to Texas Street proper and ignored the girls until they left us alone with only two cold beers for company.

  “We’re not getting anywhere,” Ernie said.

  “Something’s got to break soon.”

  “It better. It’s not just muggings any more. It’s murder.”

  I felt my innards sliding slowly into knots.

  “We got to stay out tonight. Through curfew if we have to.”

  “Yeah.”

  I looked at Ernie. “Could it be the Koreans?”

  “It could. But if the Korean National Police really believed it, they’d be cracking down on every local hoodlum hard, trying to squeeze the truth out of them.”

  “What if the local police are in on it?”

  “Then we’re in trouble. But I don’t believe it. Too much pressure from up top. The Koreans need us to ensure that their Communist brothers to the north don’t pour down here like they did two decades ago. And maybe more important nowadays is that they need the foreign exchange the fleet brings in.”

  “And if the navy seriously believes that the Koreans aren’t doing everything they can to stop the assaults on their sailors, they could stop coming into port here.”

  “They’d lose dock fees and re-supply money …”

  “Not to mention tourism.”

  We both laughed.

  “Somebody in the navy then. In the advance party.”

  “Could be that, since the Kitty Hawk was still at sea last night.”

  I thought about the map I had made and the blotter reports. “The last time the Kitty Hawk was here, there were no muggings until they had docked.”

  “So?”

  “We’ve been assuming that it’s probably a gang of sailors aboard the Kitty Hawk that have been preying on their own shipmates.”

  “Yeah, but maybe there’s more than one group. Ideas like this are catching.”

  “That’s possible. But maybe it is somebody in the advance party or maybe it’s somebody who’s here all the time. Somebody who knows the terrain, the lie of the land, the ins and outs of all the back alleys.”

  “And if it’s not Koreans …”

  “That’s right. GIs. GIs who spend a lot of time down here.”

  “Village rats.”

  “All the GI village rats have gone into hiding until the fleet leaves.”

  “So it seems.”

  I took a sip of my beer. I didn’t like what I was going to say. “That leaves the MPs.”

  Ernie thought about it for a minute. “That would also explain why there were no arrests made in the past.”

  “It sure would.”

  He looked at me. “But why do the muggings only occur when the Kitty Hawk is here? And not other navy ships?”

  “That I don’t know yet.” I looked around. “Let’s find a phone.”

  “A phone?”

  “Yeah. I got a call I want to make.”

  The desk sergeant didn’t want to answer any of my questions at first because he could see what I was getting at, but I reminded him that this was an official investigation and he would be obstructing that investigation if he didn’t cooperate in every reasonable way.

  I borrowed paper and pencil from the mama-san and wrote furiously, trying at the same time to keep one finger in my ear to drown out the insane rock music. I seriously considered asking Ernie to hold his finger in my ear, but he was busy flirting with a couple of the girls.

  Besides, there are limits to a partnership, even for crimebusters.

  I had what I needed. Ernie looked at the sheet. A bunch of names, ranks, and times scribbled across the wrinkled paper.

  “What’s that?”

  “No time to explain. Let’s go.”

  The girls pouted on our way out.

  The MP jeep that held the central position on Texas Street was cruising slowly down the crowded block. I waved them down, and they came to a halt. I looked at my notes and read off thee names to them.

  “Have you seen any of these guys? Tonight? In civilian clothes?”

  I’m not too good a judge of whether someone is telling the truth or lying, but this time I had an edge. The young buck sergeant on the passenger side let the muscles beneath his cheek flutter a couple of times. Then he blinked and said, “No.”

  I thanked him for the information. He’d given me more than he knew.

  We walked off into the darkness away from the men, heading from the center of Texas Street toward the place a few blocks away where I had seen the two big Americans turn down a dark alley and disappear. We wandered around for a while, and in order to cover more ground we split up, agreeing on our routes and where to meet in fifteen minutes.

  A couple of blocks later I saw the big guy I had seen before, standing at the mouth of an alley. He looked into the alley at something and then back at me, as if undecided what to do.

  I shouted, “Hey!” and started running toward him.

  He hesitated for a second and then ran. I let him go and turned down the alley he had been protecting. It was dark. I could see nothing. Then I tripped, sprawled, and something hit me from behind.

  When I came to, Ernie was looking down at me, surrounded by some sailors in their dress whites and Shore Patrol armbands. I was never so happy to see squids.

  They got me into their van and took me somewhere. Ernie told me, but it didn’t register. Nothing much did. On the way there, I passed out again.

  The next morning when I woke up I waited for a while and then asked the medic when he walked into the room.

  “Where am I?”

  “The dispensary. On Hialeah Compound. Had a pretty nasty bump on the noggin last night.”

  “What’s my condition?”

  “Hold on.”

  The medic left the room, and after a few minutes a doctor came in. He looked at my head, checked some X-rays up against a lightboard, and then pronounced me fit for duty.

  No shirkers in this man’s army. I could’ve used a few days off.

  While I was getting dressed, Ernie showed up. He consoled me by reminding me about the Happy Hour at the Hialeah NCO Club tonight.

  “Exotic dancers, too,” he said.

  I smiled but it hurt the back of my head.

  The bright sun of southern Korea was out. In force.

  “Personnel? Why personnel?”

  “I want to check something out. Leonard Budusky.”

  “Who?”

  “An MP who I think is an acquaintance of mine.”

  After we showed him our identification, the personnel clerk got Budusky’s folder. “He came to Korea over six months ago,” I said.

  The bespectacled clerk ran his finger down a column of typed entries.

  “Seven,” he said.

  “What state is he from?”

  “Virginia.”

  I held up my hand. “Wait a minute. Let me guess. Norfolk.”

  The clerk looked up at me, his eyes almost as wide as his mouth. “How the hell did you know that?”

  Ernie tried to pretend that he was in on the whole thing, but when we got to the Main Post Snack Bar, he bought me some coffee and threatened me with disembowelment if I didn’t tell him what was going on. Considering the pain I was in, I probably wouldn’t have noticed it much if I’d let him go through with it. Instead, to humor him, I explained.

  “First of all,
to find the culprit, we’ve got to figure out motive and opportunity.”

  “I remember that much from CID school.”

  “The motive seemed to be money. Now, that narrows our list of suspects down to anybody in the Seventh Fleet, any GI stationed near Pusan, or any of the Korean citizens of this wonderful city.

  “The next step is figuring out opportunity. That brings us closer because that narrows it down to the four thousand or so sailors who had liberty during the stopover, the three hundred or so GIs who had passes, and again, all the Korean citizens of this fair city.”

  “So it’s a tough job. We knew that.”

  “But the mugger got anxious. On the first night, when only the advance party was in, he attacked. That eliminated all the sailors who were at sea with the Kitty Hawk. When Petty Officer Lockworth died, it also eliminated, in my mind, the Korean civilian populace. Because there is no doubt that the Korean authorities would take the mugging of American sailors seriously, but they realize the enormity of the bad public relations they would get back in the States if a Korean was found to have done the killing. The fact that they still didn’t launch an all-out manhunt meant to me that they must be confident, through their own sources, that it wasn’t the work of one of their local hoodlums.

  “That leaves the GIs. When the fleet is in, soldiers tend to be conspicuous. They stick out, by virtue of their stinginess, from their seafaring compatriots, and the girls down in the village can spot them a mile away.

  “We wandered all over Texas Street for two nights and didn’t see any, did we?”

  “Not except for the MPs.”

  “Exactly, and except for the two big guys we saw in that alley that looked familiar to me. After I called the desk sergeant and got the names of all the MPs who had duty on the first night, it started to click. The three big studs in the central patrol had all stayed on duty past curfew. Of the four patrols, theirs was the only patrol that did. Of the three of them, the desk sergeant told me that the biggest and meanest was Corporal Leonard Budusky. I remembered their faces. Two of them were the guys we saw scurrying down that alley. When the MPs on duty denied having seen them, I knew it had to be a lie. When MPs are in the village having fun, they will seek out the on-duty patrol, to let them know where they’re at or just to say hello.