AHMM, July-August 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "What'd you tell the KNPs?” I asked.

  "I told them I couldn't have killed Miss O."

  "Why not?"

  Rothenberg once again allowed his head to hang loosely on his long neck. “Because I love her,” he said.

  Love. The classic four-letter word. Ernie smirked. Virtually every young G.I. who arrives in Korea and finds his first yobo down in the ville falls in love. The U.S. Army is so used to this phenomenon that they require eight months’ worth of paperwork for an American G.I. to marry a Korean woman. What with a twelve-month tour of duty, a G.I. has to fall in love early and hard to be allowed permission to marry. Why all the hassles? Simple. To protect innocent young American G.I.'s from the sinister wiles of Asian dragon ladies. At least, that's the official rationale. The real reason is flat-out racism.

  "Where were you last night, Rothenberg?"

  "You mean after curfew?"

  "Yes. But let's start from the beginning. What time did you leave work?"

  I dragged another wooden stool from against the wall of the interrogation room and sat down opposite Private First Class Everett P. Rothenberg. I pulled out my pocket notebook and my ballpoint pen and prepared to write. Rothenberg started talking.

  Ernie leaned against the cement wall, arms crossed, and continued to smirk. The KNPs continued to glare. A spider found its web and slowly crawled toward a quivering moth.

  Our first stop was the Dragon Lady Teahouse.

  Miss O had worked here. And according to Rothenberg, she was the toast of the town. The tallest and most shapely and best looking business girl in the village of Paldang-ni. The front door was covered with a brightly painted facade; a replica of a gateway to an ancient imperial palace. The heavy wooden door was locked. Ernie and I strolled around back. Here the setting was more real. Piled cases of empty soju bottles, plastic-wrapped garbage rotting in rusty metal cans, a long-tailed rat scurrying down a vented drainage ditch.

  The back door was open. Ernie and I walked in. The odor of ammonia and soapy water assaulted our nostrils. After a short hallway, light from a red bulb guided us into the main serving room. Wooden tables with straight-backed chairs covered most of the floor. Cushioned booths lined the walls, and behind a serving counter a youngish-looking Korean woman sat beneath a green-shaded lamp, laboring over heavy accounting ledgers. When she saw us, she pulled off her horn-rimmed glasses and stared, mouth agape.

  I flashed my ID. Ernie found a switch and overhead fluorescent bulbs buzzed to life. The woman stared at my Criminal Investigation badge and finally said, “Weikurei nonun?"

  No bow. No polite verb endings. Just asking me what I wanted. A Korean cop would've popped her in the jaw. Being a tolerant Westerner, I shrugged off the insult.

  "What we're doing here,” I said, “is we want to talk to Miss Kang Mi-ryul."

  She touched the tip of her forefinger to her nose. Another hand gesture not used in the West. She was saying, that's me. I explained why we were here but she'd already guessed. She said, “Miss O” and pulled out a handkerchief. After a few tears, she calmed down and started to talk. In Korean. Telling me all about her glorious and gorgeous friend, the late O Sung-hee. About Miss O's amorous conquests, about the job offers from other teahouse and bar owners in town, about the men—both Korean and American—who constantly pursued her.

  Miss Kang closed the accounting books and, after shrugging on a thick cotton coat, walked with us a few blocks through the village. It was almost noon now and a few chop houses were open. The aroma of fermented cabbage and garlic drifted through the air. Miss Kang led us to her hooch, the same hooch she and Miss O had shared. She allowed us to peruse Miss O's meager personal effects. Cosmetics, hair products, a short row of dresses in a plastic armoire, tattered magazines with the faces of international film stars grinning out at us. Then Kang told us that Miss O's hometown was Kwangju, far to the south, and that she'd come north to escape the poverty and straightlaced traditionalism of the family she'd been born into. When I asked her who had killed Miss O, she blanched and pretended to faint. But it was a pretty good act because she plopped loudly to the ground and a neighbor called the Korean National Police, a contingent of which had been following us anyway.

  In less than a minute they arrived and glared at us as if Miss Kang's passing out had been our fault. One of the younger cops stood a little too close to Ernie and Ernie shoved him. That caused a wrestling match and a lot of cursing until the senior KNP and I broke it up.

  So much for good relationships between international law enforcement agencies.

  As we left, Miss Kang was still crying and two of the KNPs, God bless them, were still following us.

  * * * *

  Camp Colbern wasn't much better.

  Rothenberg worked in the 304th Signal Battalion Communications Center. Electronic messages came in over secure lines and were printed, copied, and distributed to the appropriate bureaucratic cubbyholes. Apparently, Camp Colbern had two functions. First, as a base camp for an army aviation unit, boasting a landing pad with a dozen helicopters and associated support personnel, and second, as a relay station for the grid of U.S. Army signal sites that runs up and down the spine of South Korea. When I asked the signal officers a few technical questions, they clammed up. I didn't have a “need to know,” they told me.

  "How do they know what we ‘need to know'?” Ernie asked me. “This is a criminal investigation. We don't know what we need to know until after we already know it."

  I shrugged.

  Private Rothenberg had been a steady and reliable worker, I was told. A good soldier. He had no close buddies because his off-duty time was spent out in the village of Paldang-ni, apparently mooning over Miss O Sung-hee.

  Ernie pulled a photograph from his pocket, one he'd palmed while we rummaged through O's personal effects at Miss Kang's hooch. It was of Miss O and Miss Kang standing arm in arm, smiling at the camera, in front of a boat rental quay on the bank of a river. The sign in Korean said namhan-kang, the Namhan River not far from here. Miss O was a knockout, with a big beautiful smile and even white teeth and a figure that would make any sailor—or any G.I.—jump ship. Miss Kang, by comparison, was a plain-looking slip of a girl. Shorter, thinner, less attractive. And her smile didn't dazzle as Miss O's did; it looked unsure of itself, slightly afraid, wary of the world.

  Atop her head, at a rakish angle, Miss O wore a black baseball cap. Using a magnifying glass, I examined the embroidery on the front. It was a unit designation: 545th Army Aviation Battalion, Company C. In smaller print on the side was a shorter row of letters. It took stronger light for me to make them out. Finally I did: Boson. I handed the photograph back to Ernie.

  Ernie took another long look at the gorgeous Miss O and then slipped the photo back into his pocket. Something told me he had no intention of letting it go.

  * * * *

  The air traffic controllers at the Camp Colbern aviation tower told us that Chief Warrant Officer Mike Boson was due in at sixteen thirty. Four thirty p.m. civilian time. Ernie and I were standing on the edge of the Camp Colbern helipad when the Huey UH-1N helicopter landed. As the blades gradually slowed their rotation, a crewman hopped out, and then the engine whined and the blades slowed further, and finally the co-pilot and then the pilot jumped out of the chopper. Chief Warrant Officer Mike Boson slipped off his helmet as he walked toward us and tucked it beneath his arm.

  "The tower told me you wanted to talk to me,” he said.

  Ernie and I flashed our identification. I asked if there was a more comfortable place to talk.

  "No,” Boson said. “We talk here. What do you want?"

  The chopper's engine still buzzed. The crewman and the co-pilot hustled about on various errands, all the while listening to what we were saying. Boson, apparently, wanted it that way. We asked Boson where he had been last night, the night of the murder.

  "In the O Club.” The officers’ club here on Camp Colbern. “For dinner, a couple of beers, and then to the BOQ for a
good night's rest.” The bachelor officers’ quarters.

  "You didn't visit Miss O Sung-hee?” Ernie asked.

  "No."

  "Why not?"

  Boson shrugged. “I don't run the ville when I have duty the next morning."

  "You were scheduled to fly?"

  "Yes. To Taegu to pick up the 19th Support Group commander. And then south from there."

  "When did you hear Miss O was dead?"

  "Just before I left out this morning. Everyone was talking about it."

  "Did you realize you'd be questioned?"

  "No."

  "Why not?"

  "Because I knew her, but a lot of other guys knew her too."

  "Like who?"

  He shrugged again. “I don't know their names."

  We continued to question Warrant Officer Boson and he finally admitted that he'd spent more than just a few nights with Miss O Sung-hee and that he'd also escorted her and Miss Kang to the Namkang River the day the photograph Ernie showed him had been taken. They'd rented a boat and rowed to a resort island in the middle of the river and a few hours later returned to Paldang-ni, where Boson spent the night with Miss O.

  "In her hooch?” I asked.

  Warily, Boson nodded.

  "It's tiny,” Ernie said. “So where did Miss Kang sleep?"

  For the third time, Boson shrugged. “I don't know."

  "But she lived there, too, didn't she?"

  "Yes. But every time I stayed with Miss O, she'd disappear. I figured she bunked with the landlady who owns the hooch."

  "But you weren't sure?"

  "Why would I care?"

  We asked if he knew Rothenberg. He didn't.

  "You don't know a lot of things,” Ernie said.

  Boson bristled. “I'm here to fly helicopters. Not to write a history of business girls in the ville."

  "And not to murder anyone?"

  Boson dropped his helmet and leapt for Ernie's throat. I thrust my forearms forward, blocked him and, although it was a struggle, managed to hold Boson back. The chopper crewman and the co-pilot ran over. I shoved Chief Warrant Officer Boson backward, they held him, and I dragged Ernie off of the helipad.

  * * * *

  Night fell purple and gloomy over the village of Paldang-ni. But then a small miracle happened. Neon blinked to life: red, yellow, purple, gold. Some of it pulsating, some of it rotating, all of it beckoning to any young G.I. with a few dollars in his pocket to enter the Jade Lady Nightclub or the Frozen Chosun Bar or the Dragon Lady Teahouse. Tailor shops and brassware emporiums and drugstores and sporting goods outlets lined the narrow lanes. Rock music pulsated out of beaded curtains. A late autumn Manchurian wind blew cold and moist through the alleyways, but scantily clad Korean business girls stood in miniskirts and hot pants and low-cut cotton blouses, their creamy bronze flesh pimpled like plucked geese.

  The women cooed as we passed, but Ernie and I ignored them and entered the first bar on the right: The Frozen Chosun. They served draft OB, Oriental Brewery beer, on tap. We jolted back a short mug and a shot of black market brandy, ignored the entreaties of the listless hostesses scattered around the dark enclosure, and continued on to the next dive. At each stop, I inquired about Miss O Sung-hee. Everyone knew her. They all knew that she'd been murdered brutally and they all assumed that the killer had been her jealous erstwhile boyfriend, an American G.I. by the name of Everett P. Rothenberg. But a few of the waitresses and bartenders and business girls I talked to speculated further. Miss O had Korean boyfriends. A few. Mostly men of power. Business owners in the bar district. But one of the men stood out. It was only after laying out cash on an overpriced sweetheart drink that one underweight bar hostess breathed his name. Shin, she said. Or that's what everyone called him: Mr. Shin. He was a dresser and a player and had no visible means of support other than, she'd heard, playing a mean game of pool and beating up the occasional business girl who fell under his spell.

  "A kampei,” I said to her. A gangster.

  She shook her head vehemently. “No. Not that big. He small. How you say?” The overly made-up young woman thought for a moment and then came up with the appropriate phrase. “He small potatoes."

  In addition to buying her a drink, I slipped her a thousand won note. About two bucks. The tattered bill disappeared into the frayed waistband of her skirt.

  * * * *

  When Ernie and I entered the King's Pavilion Pool Hall, all eyes gazed at us.

  There was no way for two Miguks to enter the second-story establishment surreptitiously. It was a large open room filled with cigarette smoke and stuffed with green felt pool tables from one end to the other. Narrow-waisted Korean men held pool cues and leaned over tables and lounged against walls, all of them puffing away furiously on cheap Korean cigarettes and all of them glaring at us, eyes narrow, lips curled into snarls, hatred filling the air even more thickly than the cloud of pungent tobacco smoke. This pool hall wasn't for G.I.'s. It was for Koreans. The G.I.'s had their bars, plenty of them, about two blocks away from here in the foreigners’ bar district. Nobody, not even the man who collected money at the entranceway, wanted us here.

  Ernie snarled back. “Screw you too,” he whispered.

  "Steady,” I replied.

  In Korean, I spoke to the bald-headed man collecting the fees. “Mr. Shin?” I asked. “Odiso?” Where is he?

  The man looked blankly at me. Then he turned to the men in the pool hall. From somewhere toward the back, a radio hissed and a Korean female singer warbled a rueful note. I said again, louder this time, “Mr. Shin."

  The snarls turned to grimaces of disdain. Korean cuss words floated our way. A few men laughed. More of them turned away from us, lifting their cues, returning their attention to eight balls and rebound angles and pockets. Nobody came forward. Nobody would tell us who Mr. Shin was or, more importantly, where to find him.

  Ernie and I turned and walked back down the stairway. At the next pool hall, we repeated the same procedure. With the same result.

  * * * *

  Later that night, we stood at the spot where Miss O had been murdered.

  The site was located atop a hill overlooking both Paldang-ni and Camp Colbern. On the opposite side of the hill, to the north, moonlight shone down on the sinuous flow of the Namhan River. One or two boats drifted in the distance. Fishermen on their way home to straw-thatched huts. On the peak of the hill stood a tile-roofed shrine with a stone foundation and an enormous brass bell hanging from sturdy rafters. No one was there now, but I imagined that periodically Buddhist monks walked up the well-worn path to sound the ancient-looking bell.

  "When did they find her?” Ernie asked.

  I pulled out a penlight to read my tattered notebook.

  "Zero five hundred this morning,” I said. “Just before dawn. By two Buddhist monks who came up here to say their morning prayers. She was lying right here."

  I pointed at the far edge of the stone foundation, nearest the river.

  "Stabbed in the back once,” I continued. “And then four or five times in the chest. She bled to death."

  "And the murder weapon?"

  "Never found. The KNPs assume it was a bayonet for two reasons. The size and depth of the entry wounds and the fact that Rothenberg, being a G.I., would've had access to one."

  "His bayonet was found in his field gear."

  "He could've stolen another one. Happens all the time."

  "Or,” Ernie replied, “the killer could've bought one on the black market."

  I nodded. Ernie was right. The KNPs were taking a big leap in locking up Rothenberg. So far, they had no hard evidence linking him to the murder. Still, public opinion had to be mollified. When a young Korean woman is murdered, someone has to be locked up, and fast. Otherwise, the public will wonder why they're spending their hard-earned tax dollars on police salaries. Someone has to pay for the crime. Like the yin and the yang symbols on the national flag, harmony in the universe must be restored. Someone is murdered,
someone must pay for that murder. Everett P. Rothenberg wouldn't be the first American G.I. convicted in Korea of something that there was no definitive proof he'd actually done. But if that's the case, harmony will come to his defense. If there's little or no evidence proving that he did it, Rothenberg will receive a light sentence. Maybe four years in a Korean jail and then deportation back to the States. So far, no one—including me and Ernie—had any real idea who'd murdered Miss O Sung-hee.

  Rothenberg's alibi was sketchy. After finishing the day shift at the 304th Signal Battalion Commo Center, he'd eaten chow, showered, changed clothes, and headed to the ville. At about

  eighteen hundred hours, he'd arrived at the Dragon Lady Teahouse. There, he'd sat in a corner sipping on ginseng tea while Miss Kang and Miss O Sung-hee worked. Miss Kang doing most of the actual serving and preparation. Miss O sitting with customers—Korean businessmen, small groups of American officers—adding beauty and charm to their evening. Before the midnight curfew, according to Rothenberg, Miss O convinced him that she was too tired to see him that evening and he should return to Camp Colbern. He did. Since he returned to his base camp before the midnight-to-four curfew, the M.P.'s at the main gate didn't bother to log in his name. Lights were already out in the barracks. In the dark, he'd undressed, stuffed his clothes and wallet in his wall locker, and hopped into his bunk. None of the other G.I.'s in the barracks had any recollection of his arrival.

  Ernie walked over to the bell and rapped it with his knuckles. A low moan reverberated from the sculpted bronze, like the whispered sigh of a giant. We started back down the trail. It was steep. Boulders and thick brambles of bushes blocked our way on either side. We stepped carefully, inching forward, watching our step in the bright moonlight.

  "Why'd we bother coming up here?” Ernie asked.

  As he spoke, the earth shook. Just slightly. As if something heavy had thudded to the ground. I looked back. I could see nothing except Ernie staring at me quizzically, wondering why I had stopped. Then two more thuds. One after the other. Shallower this time, as if something were skipping forward, becoming louder, rolling toward us.