Nightmare Range

by Martin Limon

The Widow Po smiled through her tears and thrust out her chest. “They were afraid of me.”

  “You allowed Whiskey Mary to go to prison.”

  Widow Po shook her head rapidly. “For a while. There was no choice. But I sent spirits to protect her.”

  I briefly translated everything that had been said to Ernie. He took a step toward the Widow Po. Miss Choi stopped chanting, alarmed.

  “Why did you ask Miss Choi to bring us to the kut?”

  “Because Moretti kept interrupting me,” the Widow Po answered, looking surprised, as if it should be obvious. “Sometimes he took over the whole ceremony, upsetting everyone. Making my clients unhappy. How can they talk to their dead parents if some GI is always in the way?”

  Miss Choi translated the answer for Ernie.

  Ernie grabbed the Widow Po’s elbow. Miss Choi gasped.

  “Moretti won’t be interrupting any more kuts,” Ernie said. “Because you’ll be in the monkey house. No kuts allowed.”

  The Widow Po understood the GI slang. Monkey house meant prison.

  I was watching intently and as best I could tell, the Widow Po made no move. But maybe the light was bad, or maybe the glow from the orange moon and the candlelight in the hooch and the neon flashing from the city below caused me to miss something. But suddenly a rush of air escaped from Ernie’s mouth and he doubled over as if punched by a two-by-four.

  Miss Choi resumed her chanting, frantic now, garbling her words.

  Ernie knelt in the dust. The Widow Po spoke once again in broken English.

  “No monkey house. The Widow Po no go there. I show Moretti he can’t beat me. That’s why I called you. No one will ever know what I did to him. No one alive.”

  A glimmering butcher knife slipped out of the Widow Po’s long sleeve.

  Before I could move, Miss Choi shouted and leapt toward the Widow Po.

  The knife was in the air but Miss Choi rammed head first into the body of the Widow Po. Amazingly, the mudang maintained her balance and hopped back a few steps, still holding the knife. I ran toward Ernie but he was in so much pain that he couldn’t rise to his feet.

  The Widow Po bounced nimbly on the balls of her feet, holding the butcher knife aloft, her long hair swaying loose in the mountain breeze, daring us to come at her.

  I grabbed Miss Choi and held her. She bowed her head once again and started her chant. A different one this time, more guttural. Not Korean, I didn’t think. As if she were speaking some ancient language of the dead.

  The Widow Po stopped bouncing. The knife dropped from her hand. She took a huge intake of breath, held it, and then a roar emitted from her frail frame. A roar of pain. Deep voiced. Thundering. The voice of a wounded man.

  The Widow Po staggered, clutching her chest. She twisted, turned, knelt to the ground. She roared again in her deep-throated voice and then spat blood straight out into the air.

  I rushed toward her but before I could reach her she crumpled to the ground. I turned her over. Still breathing. A pulse in her neck but she was out cold.

  I rushed back to Ernie. He was on his feet, staring at me. “What happened?”

  “She sucker punched you.”

  “How the hell did she manage that?”

  I looked back at the Widow Po. She still hadn’t moved. “I don’t know.”

  Miss Choi was on her feet now, no longer chanting. She pulled off her white skirt and blouse, revealing blue jeans and a red T-shirt below. Carefully, she stuffed the white clothing in her canvas bag.

  Lights flickered on throughout the village. Electric bulbs. A television chattered to life. The announcer spoke in rapid Korean: Ilki yeibo. The weather report.

  People emerged from their hooches, completely ignoring Miss Choi and Ernie and me, except for three neighbor woman who approached and tried to help the moaning Widow Po to her feet. The exhausted mudang collapsed, the muscles in her legs like straw. I stepped forward to help but the women waved me back. Unbidden, two men emerged from a nearby home. Together the five of them carried the Widow Po back into her hooch.

  Ernie and I looked at each other.

  Miss Choi grabbed our hands and led us back down the dark pathway to the bottom of Kuksadang.

  The next time I attended the classroom of Miss Choi Yong-kuang, I sat up a little straighter and paid a little more attention to her instruction. After the lesson, I waited behind until the other students had left. I didn’t have to say anything. Miss Choi read my mind.

  “The Widow Po is crippled,” Miss Choi told me. “She hasn’t moved from her hooch since the night we were up there.”

  “How will she live?”

  “Rich people make offerings to her.”

  “They’re still afraid of her.”

  Miss Choi nodded. I watched as she packed her lesson notes and her textbook into her leather briefcase.

  “You knew what was going to happen,” I said.

  She shrugged.

  “The Widow Po brought all this upon herself,” I continued. “Because of a guilty conscience.”

  Miss Choi clicked the hasps on her briefcase and looked me in the eye. “The Widow Po is a brave woman.”

  I nodded in agreement.

  “What about Moretti?” I asked.

  “No need to do anything further. Mori Di’s taken his revenge.”

  I studied Miss Choi for a long moment. “You really believe that, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I do.”

  I helped her lock up the classroom and then walked her out the main gate of 8th Army Compound and escorted her to the bus stop. No muggers jumped out at us.

  Neither did any evil spirits.

  THE COLD YELLOW SEA

  Freezing outside an Asian brothel in the middle of the night with a cold rain blowing in off the Yellow Sea is enough to make even the most dedicated investigator ponder the worth of a career in military law enforcement. Fabulous pay and benefits. Fun, travel and adventure. Three hots and a cot. And, if President Ford was to be believed, a raise that would bring my corporal’s pay all the way up to $450 per month by the end of this fiscal year.

  Wow.

  The wet pellets slapping my face suddenly didn’t sting so badly. Still, I shuffled deeper into the shadows beneath an overhanging eave.

  Tonight, Ernie and I were after an MP gone bad. Last we heard, he was shacked up inside Building Number 36 in this maze of narrow alleys known as the Yellow House. Down the lane, light flickered out of large plate glass windows. Behind those windows sat groups of Korean women in flimsy negligees, waiting for the foreign sailors who periodically invade this port of Inchon on the western coast of Korea on the edge of the Yellow Sea. Merchant marines from all over the world—Greece, the Philippines, Japan, Holland, Sweden, and even the United States—are regular customers here.

  The local US military contingent is not huge—just one transportation company, which trucks supplies from the Port of Inchon to the capital city of Seoul, and one platoon of Military Police to provide security for the duty-free shipments.

  A door slammed. A tall, dark figure emerged from the foot of the stairwell just outside the glow of the plate glass window. Then I saw someone behind him. A girl, bowing; telling him in a nice way: thanks for the money but now it’s time for you to get lost. The tall man didn’t acknowledge her farewell. He turned, shoved his hands into his pockets, and strode toward the alley.

  As he passed the light of the big window I caught a glimpse of his face. Dark eyes, pug nose, heavy stubble of an eight-hour beard. Our quarry. The MP gone bad: Buck Sergeant Lenny Dubrovnik.

  Ernie was on the other side of Building 36, making sure Dubrovnik didn’t slip out the back. My .45 sat snugly in the shoulder holster beneath my armpit but I didn’t expect to have to use it. Dubrovnik knew the deal. He was a GI in Korea. Once you’re busted, there’s nowhere to run. The peninsula is surrounded on three sides by choppy seas. The only land route is across the Demilitarized Zone. And all international ports of embarkation are mo
nitored with a degree of efficiency that only a militarized police state can provide.

  As Dubrovnik approached, I stepped out of the shadows, showing my badge.

  “Hold it right there, Sarge,” I said. “The games up. Take your hands out of your pockets and assume the position.”

  Dubrovnik came to a halt on the flagstone steps, glanced at my badge and then at my face. His eyes seem baffled for a moment and then his lips began to curl.

  “Alone?” he asked.

  I should’ve told him I had a squad of MPs lurking right around the corner. The least I should’ve told him was that Ernie would be here in a matter of seconds. But Dubrovnik was an MP himself and cops always claim that we can make any bust by ourselves. Backup’s not necessary. So instead of telling him what I should’ve told him, that he had nowhere to run and I could claim the entire weight of the 8th United States Army as my backup, I made my first mistake of the evening: I let pride take over.

  I looked Dubrovnik straight in the eye and shrugged. As if to say: Go ahead, Charlie, try it if you’ve got the nerve.

  My shoulders had barely lowered again when Dubrovnik turned and darted away.

  I let out a yell—incoherent, but I knew it would be enough to alert Ernie. And then I was running down the narrow pathway. Past the three- and four-story buildings that lined either side of the lane. Past the women sitting in the well-lit rooms behind the large windows, gazing out at us, their mouths half open.

  Dubrovnik turned a corner. I skidded after him. Dubrovnik turned another corner, winding away from Building 36. The district known as the Yellow House was actually about two acres square. The entire area was composed of one pedestrian alley turning into another, winding around like a maze, brothel upon brothel, no vehicles allowed.

  Dubrovnik was fast and had the added incentive of knowing he was about to be locked up. Just when he was about to pull away from me, another figure leapt out of the darkness. Dubrovnik tried to dodge this new phantom but the shadow wrapped its arms around his shoulders.

  Ernie.

  How the hell had he gotten all the way over here? And then I remembered. Ernie knew the maze of the Yellow House probably as well as Dubrovnik did.

  But Ernie’s lunge was too high. Dubrovnik shoved it off and kept moving, turning and slapping at Ernie’s grasping fingers. While they struggled I closed in but Dubrovnik was gaining distance and then Ernie and I were both panting down the alley, giving chase to the crooked MP.

  Dubrovnik darted into an open door.

  As we crashed in after him I noticed the number atop the opening: 47. Each brothel in the Yellow House area was licensed and therefore numbered. We sprinted up the first flight of cement block stairs into a foyer with varnished wood-slat flooring. Korean women stood around in various states of undress.

  “Odi?” Ernie asked. Where?

  One of them pointed toward a short flight of broad wooden steps that led down to the display area behind another plate glass window. Dubrovnik must be around the corner. Trapped.

  Before we could consult on the best way to take him, Ernie leapt down the flight of stairs. Sitting and squatting women screamed and scooted out of his way but before I could react, Dubrovnik exploded from behind a mother-of-pearl inlaid chest and landed a punch solidly on the back of Ernie’s head.

  Ernie’s knees buckled, he reached for his neck, but he didn’t go down. Dubrovnik swiveled, realizing that the man he had just punched wasn’t the first man who’d been chasing him. When he saw me standing at the top of the flight of steps, his shoulders sagged and for a moment a look of resignation spread across his swarthy features. I smiled and reached for my handcuffs. But then Dubrovnik seemed to brighten and before I could lunge forward he took a step backward, stiffened his body and leapt through the huge, gleaming, shimmering pane of glass.

  Women screamed.

  Amongst the hail of crystal shards that followed Dubrovnik into the alley, he somehow managed to roll upon impact. Like a circus acrobat he bounded immediately to his feet. Once again, he was off and running. By now Ernie had recovered and was already clawing his way toward the wicked looking glass blades sticking up from the edge of the window. He was disoriented and I knew he’d hurt himself so I grabbed his shoulders and held him.

  “What the hell you doing? He’s getting away.”

  “Out the door,” I said, “so we don’t get cut.”

  Ernie let me drag him back to the main foyer and brace him as we descended the cement stairwell. When we reached the brick-paved alleyway, Dubrovnik was nowhere to be found. A few yards past Building 47, we asked a few of the women huddling in open doorways if they’d seen him but they argued amongst themselves and pointed in four different directions.

  We’d lost him.

  Our next stop was the home of someone who we suspected of being Dubrovnik’s accomplice, a clerk who worked at the US Army’s Port of Inchon Transportation Office. His name was Lee Ok-pyong, a Korean National. Although he worked for 8th Army, Lee fell squarely under the jurisdiction of the Korean National Police. Technically, we shouldn’t even have been talking to him. Our original plan was to arrest Dubrovnik, interrogate him on compound, gather all the information we could, and then, accompanied by the Korean National Police, arrest Clerk Lee and assist in the KNP’s interrogation. The more information we could gather first, the more productive that interrogation would be. But now, with Dubrovnik on the fly, our plan had changed.

  “We shouldn’t even be doing this,” I told Ernie.

  “Screw it. If Dubrovnik makes it over here and him and this guy Lee compare notes, they’ll be able to get their stories straight. We’ll never bust anybody.”

  The crime was diversion of US Government property. PX property, to be exact.

  The way the scam worked was that Clerk Lee Ok-pyong filled out two bills of lading. One with the actual amount of imported scotch and cigarettes and stereo equipment to be delivered and the other with a larger amount that would be actually loaded onto the truck. For security reasons, each truck was escorted by an armed American Military Policeman. But since both Dubrovnik and the Korean driver were in on the scam with Clerk Lee, there was nobody to complain about the phony paperwork.

  Near the outskirts of Inchon, they would pull the truck into a secluded warehouse and unloaded the excess PX property. Then they’d continue on their merry way to the Main PX in Seoul. Before leaving the Port of Inchon, each truckload was padlocked and sealed with a numbered aluminum tag. If the tag was tampered with, the receiving clerk on the other end of the line could tell. Supposedly. I wasn’t sure if the receiving clerk was in on the scam or whether Dubrovnik had somehow managed to figure a way to re-seal the load. That was one of the things we’d hoped to discover during Sergeant Dubrovnik’s interrogation.

  However they were doing it, the scam was working well and might have gone on forever if an audit in the States hadn’t identified the discrepancy between what was being shipped to the Port of Inchon and what was actually arriving in the Main PX inventory. Once 8th Army CID was notified of the leakage, Ernie and I were given the assignment. A couple of days later we had figured out which MP and driver were in on it. Finding the clerk who supplied the phony paperwork took a little longer but now we had him. Everything would’ve gone smoothly if Dubrovnik hadn’t eluded us at the Yellow House.

  The lane leading to the home of Clerk Lee Ok-pyong was not as well-paved as the one leading to the Yellow House. A stone-lined gutter ran down the center of a muddy walkway. Brick and cement walls loomed over us on either side, most of them topped by barbed wire or shards of glass stuck into cement. If you don’t protect yourself against thievery, the Koreans believe, you deserve to be robbed.

  Using our flashlight, I found Clerk Lee’s address etched into a wooden doorway: 175 bonji, 58 ho, in the Yonghyon District of the city of Inchon. A light glimmered behind the wall, flickering because of the still falling rain. Ernie rang the doorbell. Two minutes later a door creaked open behind the wall and someone p
added out in plastic slippers across the small courtyard.

  The gate opened and a face stared out at us. Ernie tilted the beam of the flashlight and then I could see that the face was beautiful.

  She was a Korean woman in her late twenties. Her features were even and her skin was so smooth that I had to swallow before stammering out the lines I’d mentally rehearsed in Korean.

  “Is Mr. Lee Ok-pyong in? We’re here on official business.”

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  As I answered I noticed that her hair was black and thickly luxurious, tied back by a red ribbon behind her oval-shaped face.

  “We work on the American compound,” I answered. “It’s important.”

  She opened the door a little wider. Ernie pushed past her, sloshed over flagstone steps, and slid back the oil-papered door that led into the sarang-bang, the front room of the home. A thin man with thick-lensed glasses looked up at us. He wore only a T-shirt and pajama bottoms and had been studying a ledger. A lit cigarette dangled from his lips.

  “Mr. Lee Ok-pyong?” Ernie asked.

  “Yes.”

  “With all the money you made ripping off foreign hooch, seems you could afford a better place than this dump.”

  I’m not sure if Clerk Lee understood. Without being invited in, Ernie slipped off his shoes and stepped up onto the warm vinyl floor. I followed. The beautiful woman stood by the open doorway, not sure if she should run and notify the police or if she should stand here by her husband.

  “Your wife is very beautiful,” Ernie said.

  Clerk Lee was fully alert now. He sat upright and stubbed out his cigarette. “What do you want?”

  “We want you to tell us about Dubrovnik,” Ernie said. “Have you seen him tonight?”

  “Who?”

  “Sergeant Two,” I said. That’s what the other MPs and the Koreans in the transportation unit called Dubrovnik rather than trying to pronounce his full name.

  Clerk Lee’s glasses started to cloud and the color drained from his face. His wife stepped into the room, knelt, and wrapped both arms around her husband’s shoulders. She turned to us.