by Martin Limon
I talked to the old woman. She was surprised at first that I spoke Korean, but she went on to explain that she had heard nothing with the possible exception of the front gate slamming some time before dawn. Of course she might’ve been dreaming it, she said. I liked the old woman. She had a fat oval face that broke into concentric circles when she smiled, which she often did. The smile disappeared when I asked her about the body.
It was late, the sun was already up, and she knew the GI who was staying in the first hooch should have been on his way to work, but she had heard no noise. She called to the woman who lived there—her name was Yu Kyong-hui—and when there was no answer, she rapped on the rice-papered door and slid it open.
She couldn’t smell the carbon monoxide, of course, because it’s an odorless gas, but she saw the gray pallor on the GI’s face and smelled the evidence of the loosening of his bowels. She opened all the windows and called the police, but it was too late.
Ernie wandered around the courtyard, restless. A few young Korean women were playing flower cards in their room and had slid back the door when we came in. Ernie winked at them. They giggled.
The old woman said she recognized the GI. He had lived with Miss Yu in the past but hadn’t been around for over a month. Who had Miss Yu been seeing during that time? No one. She kept talking about an old boyfriend who would be coming back to Korea. The old woman didn’t know who he was. She had never seen him, that had all happened before Miss Yu ever moved here. The old woman also had no idea where Miss Yu had gone, and there had been no indication that she was planning to leave but, yes, most of her clothing had been taken with her. It didn’t look like she was planning on coming back. She’d left a deposit on the room, the old woman said, but it didn’t cover the back rent she owed.
Ernie and I slipped off our shoes before we stepped into the hooch. A large western-style bed filled most of the space. There was a beat-up old hi-fi set, a few scattered jars of makeup, some loose scraps of clothing, and a jumble of naked coat hangers in the small plastic wardrobe.
“The KNPs have already searched the room,” Lieutenant Crane said. “They’re very thorough.”
“I know that,” I said.
Just for drill I lifted the mattress, and Ernie poked around behind the wardrobe.
After a little searching Ernie said, “This must have been where the gas came out.”
There was a crack in the cement floor. Most Korean homes are heated by charcoal gas that is pushed through ducts beneath the floor. When the floor is covered with vinyl and a soft mat is laid down, it makes a comfortable place to sleep during the cold Korean winters.
Ernie lifted his fingers. They were dusted with powdered cement from the edges of the crack. “The hole opens directly into the gas duct,” he said.
We stood up and straightened our clothes. On the way out I noticed something white and pointed peeking out of a crack in the wallpaper. It was flat against the wall, and I had a little trouble prying my fingernail under it to pull it out.
It was a wallet-sized photograph of a GI. His smiling face beamed out at the world over his neatly pressed dress green uniform. Blue infantry piping draped his arm.
The morgue was in the basement of a thick-walled cement building that was so heavily fortified it must have been an ammunition storage building at one time. I shivered when the white-smocked attendant slid the body out of the refrigerated cabinet.
“The remains of Specialist Four Rodney VonEric,” Crane said. “Former stalwart employee of the ASCOM Repo Depot.”
I compared the pasty gray face of the corpse to the bright suntanned face in the photograph. Not even close.
Lieutenant Crane decided he had pretty well wrapped up the case for us, so he left us and went back to his office. A small army compound is always nervous when somebody from 8th Army comes poking around, but Crane figured that the case was so clearly an accident he’d be able to tell the ASCOM provost marshal that there was nothing to worry about from us.
Probably he was right.
After he left, we wandered around the compound. Neatly clipped patches of lawn had been bleached yellow by the cold breath of autumn. A few crinkled leaves hadn’t given up for some reason and clung stupidly to skeleton branches.
‘Should we catch the last bus to Seoul?” Ernie asked.
“I keep wondering why that girl disappeared.”
“The KNPs will find her. That’s not for us.”
“Yeah.”
We wandered past the façade of the post theater. A fantasy was playing, with the half-naked daughter of some movie star in the lead. Nothing I wanted to see.
“Anyway, let’s check out the Repo Depot,” I said. “Give us some more notes for our report. Then we can spend the night here in ASCOM City. Go back to work late tomorrow.”
Ernie shrugged. “The ville looks pretty good, but I don’t know.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “It looks even better at night.”
What was commonly called the Repo Depot was more properly known as the Army Support Command Replacement Detachment. After a GI lands at Kimpo Army Airfield, he is hustled through a maze of inoculations and customs procedures and then bused to the Repo Depot here at ASCOM. A day or two later, the unit he will be assigned to is decided upon.
This is a crucial moment in a GI’s life. He could be assigned to the sunny beaches of Pusan in the south of the country, or he could be banished to freezing night patrols along the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea.
When we strode into the Replacement Detachment area, Ernie grunted.
“They kept me here for four days. Couldn’t decide what to do with me.”
“It’s those lousy efficiency ratings you got,” I said.
“Yeah. Sure. That’s why they sent me to Eighth Army headquarters.”
“To keep an eye on you.”
He shrugged. “Fuck up and move up.”
A wall-sized map of Korea greeted us as we walked through the entranceway. The US Army compounds scattered throughout the peninsula were marked in red, and a chubby hand pointed to Pupyong over the stenciled message YOU ARE HERE. The map had been there during my first tour in Korea, and it had probably been there for years before that. A geographical anchor for disoriented troops.
There was some traffic in and out of the Replacement Detachment. Unusual for a sleepy compound on a Sunday afternoon, but not so unusual if they just got a flight in full of replacements. We sought out the Charge of Quarters.
The nameplate said Buck Sergeant Freddy R. Waitz. He had just sent some men away from his desk and was rummaging through a stack of paperwork, checking off blocks with a pencil. He looked up when we approached.
“Spec Four VonEric used to work for you?”
Waitz was not a tall man, about five seven or five eight, with a husky build and a flat, hooked-nose face that would have looked Indian if he hadn’t been fair-skinned, blond, and blue-eyed. He spoke with an Alabama drawl. On a small compound like this, he didn’t have to ask if we were CID. He knew.
“That’s right.”
“Where’s his desk?’
“There.” He pointed past some filing cabinets and a stencil machine on the other side of the room. “I was gonna have it cleaned out today, but we got a flight in.”
The desk was standard army issue. Gray. Metal. Boxlike. There was an in and out box on top of it and a few manuals but no pictures of relatives. I riffled through the paperwork and then checked the drawers. Ernie wandered over to the water cooler and became interested in the pure spring refreshment from Mount Sorak.
It was the bottom right drawer where I found them. Stacks of neatly folded newspapers. The last few weeks’ worth of the sports page of the Pacific Stars & Stripes. On each page penciled figures surrounded the pro football betting line.
Waitz looked over at me as I rummaged through them.
“He bet football?” I asked.
Waitz shrugged. “I don’t know.”
I stoop up and
stepped closer to him. “Come on, Waitz. Betting football is a petty offense. Not nearly as serious as getting yourself dead out in the ville. Now, who did he bet with?”
Waitz turned his face. The profile would have looked at home on the flip side of a buffalo head nickel.
“He bet with Phil Austin. I don’t know much about it, but it was just innocent stuff. You know, to have a little money down on the games so he could look forward to the Tuesday issue of Stripes, so he could see who won.”
“Who was his favorite team?”
“Huh?”
“Didn’t he have a favorite team?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Where was he from?”
“Somewhere up north. Indianapolis, I think.”
“They don’t even have a pro team there.”
“We don’t have one in Birmingham, either.”
Waitz reached in his pocket and pulled out a cigarette. He lit it with a match from a brightly colored box.
“Do you know the girl VonEric was staying with?”
“No. I’ve seen her around, but I never paid much attention. He’s been moping around because they broke up a few weeks ago.”
“Broke up? Did you see them together last night?”
“Not out in the ville. At the EM Club. I stopped there to get something to eat and I saw him all smiles, leaving with her.”
“What time was that?”
“About ten.”
“You eat late.”
“Flight in yesterday.”
Waitz fiddled with the matchbox in his hand. It bore the logo of the Olympos Hotel and Casino in Inchon.
“Do you go to the ville often?”
“I stay away from that dump. I have a section to run here. I don’t want my men to see me out there.”
“What do you do for recreation?”
“Work.”
His blue eyes squinted at the smoke curling up from his nostrils.
“Where can I find this Phil Austin?”
“I don’t know where he is today. He works at the printing plant.”
I searched through the remaining drawers of the desk and found nothing except army issue office supplies and a few notes concerning the assignments of GIs to various bases throughout the country.
A group of sergeants entered for processing, and Waitz got busy handing out forms and explaining how to fill them out. When he wasn’t looking, I slipped a couple of things into my pocket and then we left, without saying goodbye.
“Zilch,” Ernie said. “It’s time to hat up.”
“Why are you in such a hurry to get back? Is the nurse waiting for you?”
“Yeah. You know how she is. Freaks when I stay out overnight on a case.”
“With good reason.”
Ernie snorted.
“But you’ve never run the ville of ASCOM City,” I said. “You don’t want to miss your chance. And tomorrow we can sleep in late before we catch the bus back to Seoul. Before we do, we’ll check in with this guy Austin at the printing plant, just to wrap things up.”
“How many clubs you figure they have out there?”
“More than we can hit in one night.”
Ernie’s pale green eyes focused on some distant vision.
We stopped at the ASCOM NCO Club, had the pork cutlet special with a big bottle of chilled red wine, and then ID’d our way through the heavily fortified gate. After trotting across the traffic of the Main Supply Route, we strolled into the neon night of ASCOM City.
The Pupyong Police Station, Western Area, was a small cement block building painted yellow with a winged flower over the entranceway. We showed our identification to the sergeant on duty and told him we were here to investigate the death of Rodney VonEric.
He immediately knew which case we were talking about—GIs don’t die every day in ASCOM City—but his English was poor and he was relieved to find out that I could speak Korean.
“Have you found the girl yet?”
“No.” He thumbed through a notebook in front of him. “The police in her hometown have been contacted. They talked to her mother, but she claims that they have not seen or heard from her for many months now.”
“Where is her hometown?”
“Pankyo. A country village north of Taejon.”
“Was she registered here as an entertainer?”
“Yes.”
He took us over to a large booklet with the names of nightclubs stenciled neatly on top and dozens of small photographs pasted beneath. Blank female stares winked at us as he thumbed through the book.
“Here she is,” he said. “She worked at the Blue Dragon Club and her name is Yu Kyong-hui.”
I thanked him, and we walked out of the police station. He didn’t have an extra copy of the photograph, but even considering the poor quality of the black and white snapshot, I wasn’t likely to forget that face.
No matter how many years I spent in Asia I would never get used to the number of gorgeous women who were forced to work in dumps like ASCOM City.
We rolled through the alleys. Rock and roll blared from darkened nightclubs, brightly manicured fingers clutched at us as we passed. Finally we found the Blue Dragon. From the outside it appeared to be one of the larger clubs, and it sat in one of the most crowded and brightly lit alleys. I figured we were approximately in the center of the red-light district known as ASCOM City.
We pushed through the beaded curtain, and thirty set of blinking eyelashes followed us as we stepped carefully through the multicolored darkness to the bar. The place was mostly empty, just a few GIs at tables in desultory conversation with a couple of the girls. An old woman approached and brought us a couple of cold beers, and then a pair of mini-skirted girls materialized out of the darkness. They became a little standoffish when I mentioned Miss Yu Kyong-hui, but they swore they hadn’t seen her for two nights. “Two nights?”
“Yes,” one of the girls said. “She wasn’t here last night. And the night before that she went out early with a GI, but she never came back.”
“Did Miss Yu have a boyfriend?”
“Yes. But she finished with him about a month ago.”
“Why?”
The girl shrugged her slim bare shoulders. Ebony hair cascaded around them and glistened in the gyrating light.
“Maybe not enough money. I don’t know.”
“This GI who took her out night before last, do you know him?”
“No.”
“What did he look like?”
She conferred with the other girl, they chatted, and soon some of the other girls had gathered around and were offering their opinions. Finally, the girl I had been talking to turned back to me and said in English, “We don’t know what he looked like. Just GI, that’s all.”
The old woman brought another couple of wets, and Ernie gave one of the girls some money and sent her out to buy dried squid and peanuts. The girl I had been talking to was named Miss Kwon, she was from Taegu, and she had high hopes of becoming a secretary some day. For the rest of the night we drank and feasted, and when curfew came, I put away all thought of going back to Seoul.
After pounding on a small wooden door for five minutes, I managed to wake up Ernie. It took him about thirty more seconds to get his clothes on, and we promised the girls we’d be back and bundled out the door into the cold Korean morning.
Ernie looked up at the sky. “Oh, good,” he said. “It’s cloudy.”
A sharp wind whipped particles of grit into my face.
“What time is it?”
Ernie checked his watch. “Ten thirty.”
I groaned.
We showered at the post gymnasium and then paid for shaves at the PX barber shop. By then it was almost noon, so we went over to the NCO Club and ate lunch. By the time we arrived at the 8th Army Printing Plant it was already past one o’clock.
“Maybe we ought to call the first sergeant,” Ernie said.
“With no news? Let’s wait a little longer.”
The 8th Army Printing Plant was a huge, thick-walled building, so brightly whitewashed that it hurt my eyes. The Japanese Imperial Army had built the compound that we call ASCOM and they must’ve kept a lot of valuables on hand because the whole place was like a fortress.
We walked into the admin office and flashed our identification, and it wasn’t long before we had the plant manager, an American civilian, buzzing around us.
“Corporal Austin is one of our most reliable employees,” he said. “I can’t imagine what could be wrong.”
“Maybe nothing,” I said. “We just want to talk to him.”
Austin was at his printing press, ink smeared on his fingers and a folded newspaper covering his head.
He was almost as tall as me, but lanky, and muscles stood out on his arms, pulsating in almost as steady a rhythm as the machinery behind him. He stared at us with intelligent brown eyes.
“It’s about your bookmaking operation,” I said.
He said nothing.
“How much was Rodney VonEric into you for?”
He didn’t move. The only change in his face was moisture that appeared in his eyes. Finally, he made his decision. He answered.
“Over fifteen hundred dollars,” he said.
Ernie whistled.
“But I didn’t kill him.”
“Where were you Saturday night?”
“Out.”
“Where?”
“I go hiking sometimes. Through the Korean countryside.” He waved an ink-stained hand. “It’s very peaceful out there, once you get away from the city.”
“Where did you stay?”
“In a grove of trees.”
I stared at him.
“I take my rucksack and a few C rations. When it’s cold enough I take my sleeping bag.”
“Was anybody with you?”
“No.”
“Did anybody see you leave?”
“I doubt it. Most of the guys in the barracks were already out in the ville. You know how they are.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I know.”
Apparently the civilian manager had taken it upon himself to call the MP station because just then he walked in with Lieutenant Crane at his side. Crane started snapping questions, and Austin told him the same story. Crane turned to me.